Precious
by CatsOnMars
Summary: Too many times it has taken some kind of tragedy to bring Justin and Brian closer together.
1. Prologue

_You will always be young and you will always be beautiful._

Michael surely never imagined that the night he dragged Brian out to the ruins of what was Babylon and said those words again, what immediately came into his head was not Michael saving him that time on his 30th birthday, but what happened the following night. It was the thought of that silk scarf that did it. It means so many different things to him now.

He still has it folded up and hidden in a corner of a drawer in his loft. It is kept underneath some pants he never wears anymore and even Justin never knew he's held onto it after all this time. Sometimes even Brian forgets it's there.

But then sometimes something will happen to remind him of it. Michael will say those words again and he remembers, with an image flashing through his head, what the scarf looked like before hell happened. For now it is hard to remember there was a time before all of that happened, and he only knows it as it is now, stained with red, the violent color of both love and pain. For they're the same thing, and will always become inseparably part of each other in one way or another - at least that was what he learned that night. It is a reminder of those dark days when he wore it against his skin all the time while taking shot after shot or hit after hit to numb himself, seeing Justin only far away from him through a thick pane of glass as he slept, because he could not let himself forget why it happened and could not, _could not_ stop punishing himself as if that would somehow make things any better.

You try to make something good out of something bad. Sometimes it does not work out that way. Brian heard what Michael said loud and clear -_ No, _you_ are! Don't you know that you still have your powers!_ - and thought maybe he owed something to the people he almost hurt._ Cause I'm the one who'll get the call that the cleaning lady found you hanging from the rafters with a fucking boner._

But not just Michael. Poor Lindsay had no idea what he intended when he bought that scarf in the store with her, when they were talking about Justin being emotionally fifteen years his senior, or whatever number she said._ Justin, _he thought idly the next morning. _Well, Christ. What would the little fuck do without me? _And then another, more serious thought came, barely surfacing from his subconscious, not quite put into organized words. But it somehow translated into_ I need to pick a good tie to wear to a fucking prom._

Or no. Not a tie.

Michael had almost taken the scarf and thrown it away, but Brian told him tiredly, "No. Jesus, I'll find a good use for it. And I mean a _good_ use, Mikey, I promise."

You try to make something good out of something bad. Replace bad memories with good ones. But somehow they all end up mixing together anyway. The blood red with the clean white. The image of Justin looking like a prince in his tux and smiling in that way of his that Brian would never admit makes his insides feel like they're melting, forever blended with the image of him lying motionless on the pavement. And no matter how much you want to be close to somebody, the loss accompanied with all of that is too much. So you keep a pane of glass in between you and him, watching him stir in his sleep from the nightmares and trying not to reach out to him with your heart because he might feel the touch and know. Or you throw him out of your life before he can throw you out of his. And you take comfort in pretending that this way you are in control of your pain and nothing can touch you.

So every once in a while when Justin calls, Brian doesn't pick up, and just lets his voice break the silence in his loft for a few seconds as he leaves a message on the machine. Each time the message is shorter than before. And sometimes he doesn't leave a message at all. And then it is completely silent again, no ringing attacking Brian's ears and no more of the sound of Justin's voice, so familiar to him it seems it could be coming from somewhere inside of him instead of from an external source, making his stomach feel like it's dropping during a roller coaster ride like it always does when it's been a while since he last heard it. And then Brian takes a deep drag on a cigarette and his thoughts linger for a moment on a corner of one of his drawers he never looks in, a part of his soul that is hardly ever visited and very sensitive to the touch, something hidden in the dark. 


	2. Part I

In New York, there is no such thing as night. There's just a time that you sleep, or try to sleep, over the sound of cars honking and groups of pedestrians talking loudly as they walk by outside.

Except when you don't sleep. Then there is just some surreal hours during which you feel very still because you don't have anywhere to go, yet your mind is going all over the place.

Justin is sitting on the side of the mattress on his apartment floor, and as it usually is at this hour, his mind is not in New York with the loud sirens and clicking of pairs of high-heels on sidewalks, but off in Pittsburgh. He can practically see everyone there and what they're probably doing right now. Ben and Michael sitting up in bed reading. His mother having her glass of wine before bed and watching some late night talk show on TV that's supposed to be funny but doesn't make her laugh. Emmett curled up on Debbie's sofa with fuzzy slippers on, having milk and cookies and snickering to himself as he hears Debbie's loud voice cussing about something to Carl on the floor above him, the muffled sound accompanied by the slamming of dresser drawers as she changes for bed.

Despite those kind of images he sees, In Justin's head, Pittsburgh is something quiet and peaceful. He never thought of his home town that way until he came to live in New York, where there are plenty of things beautiful but not what you might call cozy, warm, or quiet. He can imagine Hunter yells obscenities at the TV screen while he's playing video games on the PlayStation his foster fathers got him for his second birthday he celebrated with them, loud enough to make them give each other annoyed looks and almost regret buying it. And Ted and Emmett probably still get into the occasional childish argument over something petty and stupid. And of course, now that Babylon has been rebuilt there is at least one place in Pittsburgh where the day is just beginning rather than ending for someone at this time of night. But even with all of the hectic and overwhelming things he remembers from his life that began with the night he was hanging around outside Babylon by himself, it is a place he associates more with little things. Waking up to the sun gently coming in through the windows in his old bedroom at home. Those gardenia flowers Mel and Linz used to grow in their garden when they lived there that made their back yard smell really good. Drag queens he didn't even know smiling at him on the street because he had acquired some local fame as either the teenage kid who almost got killed by his homophobe classmate, the last King of Babylon, or the little blond twink who somehow had Brian Kinney whipped.

He tries not to let his thoughts linger on Brian too much, but as usual, they stay there a while where they have a familiar home. But he doesn't quite know where thoughts about him should go, because the most disturbing thing about thinking about Brian is that it is not as easy to picture what he is probably doing right at this time.

Knowing Brian, he is standing up on the catwalk at Babylon, staring down at dozens of men who all look like perfect dancing Ken dolls through the lens of whatever drugs he is on and probably wouldn't look bad without them either, picking which one of them he's going to prey on tonight. Knowing Brian, he is at home watching some black and white classic like_ On the Waterfront _and worshiping the eternally young and sad ghosts in the TV. Knowing Brian, he is doing the same thing Justin is doing right now, sitting at home and just thinking as the minutes go by. Knowing Brian, he can't really know what he is doing. For he isn't sure if he really knows him anymore.

In the seven months he has lived here, he went back to Pittsburgh to visit once. By that time, Brian stopped corresponding with him nearly as often as he did in the first four months or so. Both of them had busy lives, and it just gradually happened that way. For they never made any promises to each other before he left. The only understanding was that they were just going to see what would happen.

Justin didn't know what went wrong. But when they met at the airport and Brian came up and hugged him, it didn't feel quite right. He got the distinct idea that Brian was being cautious about it. The hug felt loose, all arms and nothing else; not like when Brian usually held him and their chests pressed together so tightly they could just barely breathe in and out and smell each other's scents. And when he kissed him, it was just a greeting, the same way he kissed Michael or Lindsay instead of their way. They went for a cup of coffee and talked about their lives that Justin now realized were completely separate from each other even if everything in this town used to be his life, and then Justin went to his mom's and stayed there both nights of his visit. He went out with Brian and the other guys but never set foot in the loft.

The second night, they were all at Woody's playing pool and a little after midnight Michael, Ben, Emmett, and Ted all left more or less at the same time, as if they were assuming Justin and Brian were surely going to go home together and had things they wanted to do alone. After they were out the door, Brian and Justin looked at each other and then started another game. After eight minutes Justin was beating him, badly, even though Brian was usually a lot better at pool than him. Justin finally sighed exasperatedly, deciding this was pointless, and laid his cue carelessly on the table.

"I have to say, I thought we'd at least last longer than this," he said, sitting up on the edge of the table.

Brian, aiming to shoot a yellow ball into a middle pocket, looked up at him. "Sunshine, you're blocking my shot."

"Fuck the shot."

"Yeah, good idea. You're kicking my ass anyway."

"No, I'm not kicking your ass. This is more like intensively grinding you into a fine powder under one foot with little exerted effort. What the hell."

"Uh-oh," Brian said patronizingly, taking a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. "Little Justin is using long sentences and big words. You know what that means."

"Oh yeah? What does that mean?"

"You're feeling distressed or frustrated."

"I wonder why."

Brian lit his cigarette - or two cigarettes, as Justin only now noticed - in his mouth. He took one of them out and gave it to him. "What, cause you've been back for two days and we haven't even fucked again?"

The surprise of him voicing the obvious right out loud as if it was something completely inconsequential made Justin silent for a moment. Brian put his own pool cue up on the table and started to walk away. Justin followed him out of the bar and they started walking down the sidewalk beside each other. They got to the end of the block before Brian said any more.

"Look, we're not married like we were going to be. We're not engaged anymore. We're not even in that little arrangement anymore. It's not like we said we were going to wait for each other, we have absolutely no obligations-"

"Brian." Justin said it mostly because he wanted to make him stop, and now wasn't sure what he wanted to say. "...I already know everything you're telling me."

"Good...Because if we don't let ourselves do whatever we want, we'll never know exactly what it is we want."

"I thought we already knew that."

"You're 22. You haven't _had_ enough yet to know what you want."

Justin flung what was left of his cigarette on the ground and stomped it out. "If you don't still love me, just tell me."

Brian gave a bitter laugh, like he was seeing right through him and how ridiculous it was to pretend it would be that easy to hear. Or maybe he was laughing at how insane the idea of him falling right out of love with Justin over six months, like someone had just turned some light switch off, was. "You're not listening to me."

"Well, _do_ you?" Justin said, now stopping on the sidewalk and staring at him, waiting. "Don't make this about me if that's not what it's about."

"It goddamn well _should_ be about you. Didn't I teach you not to worry about anything else?"

"Don't give yourself so much credit, Brian. Most of what I learned about how to me a man and all that - the best homosexual I could be or whatever the hell you want to call it - I learned on my own, and it wasn't fucking easy either."

Brian looked at him calmly, took his cigarette and also threw it on the ground. "I know."

Justin looked around as if getting his bearings of where they had ended up, when really he just didn't want to look at Brian's blank face anymore. "I think I'll walk," he said. "I feel like it."

"You sure?" Brian asked.

He nodded.

But for another long moment, neither of them moved.

"Well," Brian said, breaking the silence. "Get back safely. And...keep letting me know what's going on with you."

Justin started to slowly shake his head, and he reached up and grabbed the collar of Brian's jacket. "Look, why are you...I don't know what you think, but -_ I_ love you. I still love you, and I don't see any reason to fuck something like this up - "

"Justin," he said, just like Justin had said his name just to make him stop talking before. He reached one hand up to the back of his neck to pull him forward and kissed his forehead softly. Then Justin grabbed hold of his jacket with both hands and just stayed with his face buried there against his chest for a long moment, breathing him in, unable to look at his face anymore because it was telling him everything he didn't want to hear. And then without warning, Brian pulled away and turned without another word, walking off to his car without looking behind him.

One benefit of being a real couple which Justin never actually considered when trying to get Brian to see it was what he wanted is that ending things is much more efficient and clear that way. If you were never in a real relationship in the first place, you cannot ask him when he stops making an effort if he is breaking up with you or not.

It was after that he started seeing Luke.

In the dark, a thin hand crawls up Justin's arm toward his cigarette, like a spider attracted to the light on the burning end. A lazy voice behind him says, "Give me some of that."

Justin hands the cigarette back to Luke, who has been lying in bed behind him so quiet and motionless that Justin, in his thoughts, has all but forgotten he's there. He has the lights off as he usually does at night to save energy costs. From the next room comes the faint sound of an old blues record playing, and the singer has so much pain in his voice it sounds like he's dying. Everything about the atmosphere makes it feel almost like Justin is alone, but someone is there with him.

"I didn't think old geezers like Mr. Riven were up this late," Luke laughs, who visits this apartment enough to know who must be playing the music.

"You kidding?" Justin says. "Nobody in this building goes to sleep until 2:00. Actually, I think he might be an insomniac or something. I've heard his TV on at 5:00 in the morning before."

Luke is 21 and a college student who had some of his photography featured in the same exhibit Justin was able to get some of his paintings into within two months of living there. At the gallery, Luke blatantly flirted with Justin even with his boyfriend standing five feet away gawking at the photographs he'd taken of him feeding some pigeons. The boyfriend came up during their conversation, smiling, and said, "Luke, are you trying to pick up some more beautiful subjects for your work? You always get to the really cute ones before I do," and Justin knew right away the two of them must not have much of a monogamous relationship.

Since then, he and Luke quickly became friends. He was completely shameless about making moves on him the first couple times they met up again, but Justin just told him, "You know, you're hot, but you also have awesome taste in music and art, and I just need a friend in New York to teach me how to avoid getting mugged. Let's not fuck up a good thing by fucking." So they just kept hanging out, walking to parks where Luke would take pictures, sharing hilarious stories about getting blowjobs in the darkroom at school and seeing hopelessly drunk fags injure themselves doing idiotic things on the 4th of July, and going out to the clubs and dancing together on those occasional nights when Justin had a strong feeling he was going to get depressed if he stayed at home alone in the dark with Mr. Riven's blues music heard through the walls.

He isn't_ in_ love with Luke, just as Luke isn't in love with him, but he learned to love him if only out of need. And when he came back from Pittsburgh that one time feeling cold and abandoned, like everything he depended on had been yanked out from under him, he was like a safe place to crawl back into.

Justin learned a long time ago that he surprisingly did not actually want to be like Brian, sleeping with guys he doesn't even love for no other reason than to fulfill primal needs. But sometimes being like him is the only way Justin has to keep him close. In his dark apartment where he keeps all the lights out at night, the other body in his bed can become anybody he needs.

_I want you to always remember this, so no matter who you're ever with, I'll always be there._

"Hey...Justin."

Shaken out of his thoughts, he looks up. "Yeah?"

Luke sits up in bed, and Justin notices he is staring across the room at where a very large canvas is leaning against the wall, facing into it.

"That thing has been there for almost as long as I've been coming around here. You just use it for a doorstop or something, or are you going to ever finish it?"

Justin sighs. "Have you seen it?"

Luke shakes his head, so Justin stands up with a little slow reluctance to go turn on the light.

"Agh!" Luke covers his eyes with his arm because they aren't adjusted to the light, and they both laugh. Then when he hears Justin turning the canvas around, he lowers his arm and his smile immediately drops.

"Whoa..."

One night a while ago Justin couldn't sleep, and he got out of bed and started painting Brian. Tried painting Brian. He wanted this to be something he could be more proud of than anything he'd ever done, for it to show Brian as he saw him; perfectly-shaped like a statue of a Greek god, looking powerful like a super hero, yet with a face that had the large eyes of someone who was just a boy inside if you looked very close. Something eternally beautiful, immortal and unchanging, as Brian would always be on the inside. Rage, Dionysus, and Peter Pan all put together into a physical form that was somehow so beautiful and so damaged and scarred at the same time. Justin wanted to show the world with this painting what he would always see when he looked at Brian, even when he was 60.

But he couldn't get it to come out right, no matter how much he tried to do parts of it over again. The look in his eyes was either too wise or too innocent. His body was either too lean and frail-looking or so muscular and solid he didn't look like something you would want to touch. Finally he decided maybe a subject like Brian was too much of a paradox with different qualities battling each other inside to represent with a physical form that showed those qualities. He was both a fearless warrior and a scared little boy, both aged and immature, heartless and sweet and insensitive and paternal. He was all of those things. To omit showing any of them in this painting would not do him justice at all.

So now it is just an unfinished portrait of a man with his naked body partially concealed in shadows, his face more than any other part, for leaving a lot of it to the imagination is the best Justin was able to do.

"Did you have somebody sit for that?" Luke asks, and as he sees the look on his face Justin thinks maybe he didn't do as bad a job on it as he thinks. Because Luke seems to be in some disbelief that there is a real person in the world like the one in this painting.

"No...not exactly." Justin sits back down on the mattress next to him and takes his cigarette back to take a drag, and then they both stare forward at Brian.

"But it's somebody you know?" Luke assumes, because he can tell from Justin's quiet tone.

"Yeah...this guy from back home," Justin admits with the same reluctance he showed him the painting with.

"Well, come on, you_ have_ to spill now."

Justin laughs. "Sometimes you remind me a lot of my friend Daphne."

"Don't be evasive."

"Okay, okay." Justin pauses, wondering where exactly the story should begin. "So. Back when I was seventeen - not exactly out of the closet yet," he explained, "I had just gotten a really crappy fake ID. I told my mom one night I was going to sleep over at Daphne's, and instead I went out to check out the bars and stuff. I was wandering around cluelessly, feeling like I had been pitched into a strange alternate reality world where I didn't even speak the right language. Anyway, I made it to the outside of this one club, and_ he _was coming out of there with his friends, this 29-year-old man who looked like a model in a cologne ad or something. We noticed each other at just about the same time, and he didn't wait a second before walking right over to me and saying, 'How's it going.'"

"No shit."

Justin just laughs.

"So what happened?" Luke presses. "He took you home and you did it?"

"He tried to take me home and do me. But before we got very far he got a call finding out he was a father."

"No!"

"I couldn't just go home, so I went with him and his best friend and met his newborn son. He had a couple lesbian friends who wanted to have a kid so he gave them the necessary donation. I even helped them decide on a name for their baby. _Then_ we went back to his place and did it."

Luke starts laughing loudly.

"But after that, he didn't want to have anything to do with me," Justin says. "I was a little too young for him, after all."

"Well, isn't that life. Did you ever even see him again?"

He looks to the side at Luke and smirks. "Four years later we ended up almost getting married."

Luke stares like he isn't sure if he's joking or not at first. "What happened?"

"What happened in between then and us getting engaged or what happened to stop us from getting married?"

"Um. All of the above?"

Justin smiles. "Well, how about this for an explanation? Some things can change..but there are some things you can't change."

Luke nods. "So you were the one who ran away from him, after all?"

"No, he was the one who convinced me to come to New York. Brian was right. If we had gone through with getting married, I would have been really happy for a while. But then I would have ended up depending on him financially and feeling useless, regretting that I let the chance to go after my dreams slide right by me, eventually resenting the life I had with him, and maybe even blaming him. It would have ruined our relationship, no matter how much we loved each other."

Luke looks surprised by this sensible and well-thought-through explanation. "But you still love him?"

He gives a soft laugh. "If you knew Brian - or knew _me_ when I was with Brian - you wouldn't have to ask."

"So then...what's the answer?"

Justin shows his exasperation by tossing his hands in the air. "_Fuck_ if I know."

Luke stares forward at the painting. "How come you never even told me about a Brian before?"

"I mentioned him before. Maybe not by name. You probably assumed he was just an old friend."

"Hm. Well, I did always know your reason for not wanting to sleep with me at first was bullshit. Now I know."

Justin laughs and shoves his elbow into Luke's side. "Oh, it couldn't have been that I just didn't like you and was trying to be nice?"

"Of course not," Luke says, laughing too.

The cigarette is down to a short stub, so Justin leans across Luke to put it out in the ashtray on the floor by his alarm clock. He stays lying across his lap with his head resting on his crossed arms, and Luke starts playing with his hair.

"Well, babe, I just hope you don't have any different kind of regrets now," he says.

Justin looks to the side at the figure painted on the canvas. "No."

But then he doesn't look away for a long time.

Once again, his thoughts go to someone in Pittsburgh, but even though he once knew Brian enough to paint him without a picture reference and hardly ever needed to call him to tell him about his day because he could already guess what he'd say in response to everything, he can't clearly picture what Brian would be doing right now. He doesn't know if he feels and incomplete and is out at the baths getting the only kind of therapy he believes in, or if he has actually become more whole since Justin left and spends more of his evenings having dinner at his friends' warm homes. He doesn't know if Brian has rebuilt his life to be something different that doesn't depend on the past and is held up on its own new foundation, just like he has rebuilt Babylon, and moved on, or if he is still almost the exact same person he was when Justin met him outside Babylon years ago.

And part of him thinks that might have something to do with why he couldn't paint him and make it look quite right. It is as if Brian is not letting him see him anymore; he has backed up out of the light into the shadows to hide.  



	3. Part II

It's a starless night, but the city lights are clear and sharp beneath them like a dense blanket of stars on the opposite side of the horizon. Michael and Brian are sharing their second joint of the night, standing up on the top level of a parking garage and looking out at cars and people moving in the city below them.

"This is kind of like that day in your third year of college when I helped you move into your new apartment," Michael says.

"Why?" Brian asks.

"Cause then we went up on the roof of your apartment building and sat with our feet hanging off the edge getting high. Remember? It was so foggy it looked kind of like the city was sitting on a bunch of clouds. You couldn't even really see the ground."

"Oh yeah...And we kept leaning over because if we just looked straight down long enough it felt like we were floating over all the fog."

Michael laughs. "Shit. With how messed up we were, one of us could have fallen off and died."

"No," Brian says doubtfully, laughing along with him. "I would have grabbed you."

"Or gotten pulled along with me."

"Or that."

Michael smiles, passing him the joint. "I would have grabbed you, too."

They are silent for a few seconds, and then Michael thinks of something else that sets him off laughing again. "Jesus, what fine examples of fathers we are. We better cut the shit and start practicing being on our best behavior for when our kids get here."

"I've never worried about that. Gus loves me 'cause I_ don't_ set a good example and behave myself."

"Of course. Oh well, I guess somebody will have to be like the bad grandparents that spoil them, since Lindsay's parents sure as hell aren't going to do the job."

"You didn't just use the word 'grandparents' to refer to _us_, did you?"

"In your presence? Wouldn't dream of it."

They look out at the city again and stay in a comfortable silence for a while. Then finally Michael looks to the side at Brian and says, "I talked to Justin yesterday."

Brian doesn't look at him. He waits for a second as if he didn't hear him before saying, "Yeah?"

"He wishes someone had told him about the girls coming to visit."

Now he does turn his head to meet Michael's eyes, and just shrugs. "What are you looking at me for?"

"Haven't you even talked to him since we got word from Mel and Linz that they were coming?"

"Not that it's any of your goddamn business, but now that you mention it, no."

Michael sighs. "It's just that everyone probably assumed you would tell him."

"Well, I didn't."

Michael looks away from him and crosses his arms on the ledge in front of them, leaning over so he can see the street below. "I just don't understand."

"Understand what?" Brian says.

"Why you're really going to do this to yourself all over again. He _loves_ you. Maybe he's not asking that the two of you have some kind of strictly defined long-distance arrangement, but he doesn't just want to give up - "

"Mikey? Will you please shut the fuck up?"

Michael lets out a heavy exhalation of air that was meant to be used on speech, and shuts the fuck up. But then, after a long pause of silence, Brian is the one to start talking again.

"Have you ever really wanted something and really not wanted something simultaneously?" he asks.

Michael gives a short laugh. "What are you talking about? Like having my mom around?"

"No, asshole, like...that time we read an article in school about how little kids have to make Nike shoes for a dime an hour in other countries and you went home and told your mom you didn't want her to buy you Nikes anymore. You wanted your Nikes, but not at the expense to somebody else they come at."

"Are you crazy? I didn't care about my freaking Nikes."

"Whatever. You get the idea."

"I...guess."

Brian looks away from him, far off into the distance on his right, and Michael almost taps his shoulder and tells him New York is in the other direction.

"There are things I want for myself," Brian says. "But there's also things I want for him, just as much. And they just don't match up."

"You two want more of the same things than you think."

"Like what? Kids? I didn't even want Gus."

"Like to _be together."_

Brian sighs. "It's not just about all that...This was always bound to happen some day, you know, from the very beginning. From the day Gus was born and I took him home with me. He was fucking seventeen years old, for Christ sake, and by the end of the night I just happened to be high enough that I didn't care. What can you share with someone that young _besides _a fuck?

"But I didn't think about that all these years. And now here we are, at completely different stages in our lives. His life is practically just getting started right now. All these great things are finally starting to happen for him, and he could actually make it, and that's got to be pretty exciting. But me? Maybe I'm not at the point where my life is starting to wind down, but I'm close. Nothing big is going to happen for me that hasn't already happened. I've made it. So now, after almost five years of being part of each other's lives, Justin and I have nothing in common except for some unknown number of fucks that's somewhere in the thousands by now."

"And each other's experiences and lives," Michael interjects.

"And each other's _past lives,_" he corrects, tossing the now-finished joint away. "And who cares? At least it happened, and it was good while it lasted. And it was something pretty fucking amazing that it happened at all in the first place."

"You can say that again."

"But I would be even more of a selfish prick than I already am anyway if I tried to hold onto it. Justin deserves the love of somebody who is actually part of the same world as him, that won't cause him so much misery."

"What other kind of love _is_ there?" Michael asks. "As long as I've known you,_ you're_ the one who's always said love is nothing but pain waiting to happen wrapped up in a pretty box. Lies and bullshit, you said. It's _all _misery."

"God, is this supposed to make me_ want _to throw myself into the suicidal pit of insanity people call love again?"

"You never threw yourself in before. You were unwillingly pulled into it screaming like Boba Fett getting dragged into the Sarlacc."

Brian is silent for a couple seconds, and then bursts out laughing. "Wow, Mikey, you...are_ so..._"

"I know," Michael says with a smile, not needing to hear it all.

Brian throws an arm over his shoulders and leans his head against his. "_Some_ things in this world I can depend on never changing."

"Me being pathetic?"

"Actually, what I meant was you being here."

"...That could change. You never know." Michael crosses his arms like the thoughts are making him feel cold. "Some day I could just be gone all of the sudden. Or Ben could be gone all of the sudden. Or you. You ever have those nights when you just lie awake thinking about that stuff?"

Brian pretends to be thinking about it for a second. "No. But I'm not married to someone who's HIV positive, either."

"Should that really make a difference? I mean, who knows what could happen? Ben could outlive us all. _My mom_ could outlive us all. Or JR could be the first to go."

"Yeah. Any of those things could happen. If they do I'll eat a fucking house, but-"

"You'll be dead."

"Shut up. But what's your point? We should all be lying awake every night worrying about this shit?"

"No," Michael says, "of course we shouldn't. But we...I don't know. We got to just...really cherish what is precious to us, I guess."

Brian laughs. "I don't know if I've told you this before, but you get-"

"Very sentimental when I'm high," Michael finishes for him.

Brian smiles, leans down and kisses him. "Well, I'll tell you this. You _better_ not fucking check out before we even get the chance to be a couple old queens together."

He grins back at him. "Same goes for you, Jimmy Dean," he says, and starts to walk away from the end of the roof to go back to the car.

* * *

After Justin picks up on the fourth ring, Brian thinks he knows the reason for the slightest pause there is before he answers quietly, "Hey." Cellphones have caller ID.

"Hey," Brian says back. "What's going on?"

That sigh that he knows. "Absolutely nothing. I got sick. I've just been hanging around at home the past two days."

"That sucks."

"Yeah, and it doesn't help that it's fucking boring. I painted a lot but my wrist started to hurt so much I thought I was going to get carpal tunnel or something."

Brian laughs softly. "Must be kind of lonely."

"Well, New York is always lonely, especially for having so many fucking people," Justin says indifferently. "But Luke came over earlier and brought me some orange juice and this really ugly extra blanket he doesn't use because the heat in this place is for shit. I told you about Luke."

"Yeah," he says, and thinks, _But not everything about him_, because he can tell, and wishes he would just say it. "The photographer who looks like Joseph Gordon-Levitt."

"That's the one," he says tiredly, in that too-careless way he always talks about him. It's a dead giveaway. "He's a good guy to have around, but...well, you know how I don't like orange juice with lots of pulp in it?"

Brian laughs. "Drink it anyway. Vitamins."

Then they are both laughing. And then for a long moment, neither of them says anything.

"You haven't called in a long time," Justin says at last.

He takes a while to respond. "Yeah, well...I was going to ask you..."

"What?"

"Since you found out on kind of short notice that Melanie and Lindsay are coming in town, if you won't have the money to come visit that soon I could help you out."

"Oh. Actually, right after Michael told me about that I realized I won't have time to be there that week anyway. I have a gallery opening coming up and I still have a lot to get done. I don't know if I can afford to miss any more work either, since I'm having to stay home right now."

"Okay."

"Thanks, though. I _wish_ I could see them. I can't believe how long it's been."

"I know. They kept meaning to come down here earlier, but obviously moving into a new country keeps you a little tied up. Finding jobs and a school for Gus and all that. And before they knew it, seven months had gone by."

"It's a long time not to see your son."

"...Yeah."

For a few seconds, it seems as if Justin is listening to his thoughts through the line. "I'm sure Gus will be happy to see you."

"You think so?"

"Yes."

"He's five..."

"Yeah, but trust me. He will."

Brian can't help but smile. He didn't think he would be, but at this moment he's glad he called him.

"So what's this gallery that's doing your show?"

"It's the Promenade. Lots of great artists have had their stuff featured there. Hurst, Arnaud...Well, I guess you wouldn't know who they are. Anyway, there's always lots of press there and apparently it's the place where you get noticed."

"Sounds impressive."

"It is, I guess. Luke's been totally envious and beside himself ever since he found out. He keeps saying, 'I've been going to see stuff at the Promenade for five years, I can't believe _your_ stuff is going to be in it.'"

"Well, I believe it. You've become quite the little genius, after all."

"Don't sell me short, I always was."

"Yeah, you're right...You'll probably think this is bullshit, but I always knew you were meant for something a lot greater than business school."

"...Thanks, Brian."

He thinks but doesn't tell him, _And something a lot greater than anything I can give._ Those and other unspoken words live uncomfortably in a little stretch of silence for a moment, and the ticking of the clock by his bed suddenly sounds very loud in his ears.

"Well," he says. "You take care."

"Yeah. You, too."

"Goodnight."

* * *

In the meeting room at Kinnetik, Brian is staring at a series of presentation boards on easels. Cynthia is standing off in a corner of the room with a clipboard, and the head of the art department, Jones, is leaning against the table looking very nervous about the way Brian has been looking at their work for almost a minute and hasn't said anything.

"_These_ are the boards?" he finally asks.

"Yes, Mr. Kinney," says Jones. "Uh...These are the exact design that was decided on."

"Hm." Brian turns to Cynthia. "Do _you_ notice anything wrong with these?"

Never-nervous Cynthia doesn't hesitate to answer but seems unsure about how to say it. "Well, they are a little..."

"Yes? What?"

"It's kind of distracting that the slogan isn't written quite right."

"Distracting," Brian repeats with a short laugh. "That's a kind way to put it. Jones, did not everyone on my team pass junior high?"

Jones only looks confused. "I...what is-"

"'Homes' is supposed to be _possessive_, not plural. If my _assistant _notices it then it's sticking out like a sore thumb and making it look like my agency is run by literary degenerates. Now, guess what? You have until three o' clock to get me a goddamn apostrophe on these things or it's your job."

"Uh...Brian?" Cynthia says.

"What?"

"The Warner Security meeting is at one, not three."

He blinks. "Of course it is. I was just making sure you both_ know _that, because at the rate people are moving their asses around here I would think we had all day to get ready for this pitch."

"Uh...right, Sir," Jones says, who now has a little sweat forming at his head, and leaves the room quickly.

After Cynthia coolly follows him out and Brian is back alone in his office, he immediately mutters, "One o' clock..._fuck me_."

He sits at his desk and sighs, glancing at the note he made to himself earlier when he was on the phone with Lindsay confirming what time to come pick her and Melanie up at the airport tomorrow. Right now it feels like it will be forever before this day is finally over and he can go out to Woody's and drink away the hectic stress of it, and the morning he'll see them and his kid again seems very far away.

Not five minutes later, he hears Cynthia outside his door saying, "Hey, Michael...Michael?" and his office door opens to admit his distressed-looking best friend.

"What are you _doing_?" Michael demands before Brian can even open his mouth to say hi.

"Uh. Working?" Brian says.

"Well, I guess I should have expected you'd just be carrying on with life as planned, acting like everything's fine."

"Isn't it?"

Michael doesn't seem to hear him. "After all, you didn't do shit to help Justin the_ last_ time something really terrible happened to him. Just stayed as far away from it as you could like you didn't even care-"

"Michael, _what are you talking about?_"

That finally stops him. "You mean you...Nobody's even told you yet?"

"Told me what?"

Michael hesitates for a couple seconds, and then Brian is out of his chair and going around the desk. He grabs one of Michael's arms and says in a low voice, "Look, you are scaring the living _shit_ out of me, so just tell me what-"

"No, it's not - I mean - it's not Justin, nothing happened to him," Michael says quickly, putting a hand on his chest to calm him. "It's...his sister."

"Molly?" he says, and then goes very still. "Something happened to Molly?"

But with the way Michael is looking at him, he doesn't need an answer. He knows, and everything is suddenly very quiet. Outside his office there are phones ringing and busy talking, but he doesn't hear it. There is no other explanation for Michael bursting in here like this, and the understanding seeps through him like cold water, so that when Michael finally says it out loud the words sound meaningless and alone.

"She's dead."  



	4. Part III

Author's Note: Hey, I just wanted to thank those who have taken interest in this story so far and left me reviews, however few you are. I'm sure that cliffhanger was a little surprising after two whole chapters giving no indication this fic was really going anywhere. It turns out I actually _do _know what I'm doing. Kind of. Haha. Anyway, let it be known that I already have the next chapter after this one written but after that updates are going to slow down a little because this will literally be a work-in-progess, and as things look now I would estimate this is going to end up being about eight chapters long once it's finished.

* * *

As soon as everything is able to sink in, Brian turns away from Michael to leave the office. He follows him out the door as he looks around and calls, "Cynthia!" 

"What? I'm right here," she says, appearing right at his side.

"Listen. Fire that new guy."

"Black? Or Morrison?"

"Morrison. He doesn't know what the hell he's doing, it's dragging everything behind."

"But how are you supposed to get everything done with just-"

Michael interrupts her saying, "Christ, Brian, don't you even have anything to-"

Holding up a finger to make him wait, Brian says, "We don't need him today. We're canceling the meeting."

"_Canceling?_" Cynthia repeats.

"Yes. And...I need you to get me a round trip to New York and back for later today. Any flight that'll get me there around...4:00."

She still looks confused and disoriented, but even so she only hesitates a couple seconds before writing down a note on her clipboard. "For just you?"

"Yes, one seat on the way. But two for the way back."

She makes a second note. "And what am I supposed to tell-?"

"I don't really give a shit. Family emergency. Whatever sounds good."

She sighs, "Got it," and with that, he's leaving. Cynthia gives Michael a questioning look and he almost tells her what's going on, but it's likely Brian wouldn't want her to know the reason anyway, so he just shakes his head and follows him out.

As they walk towards his car, Brian asks, "What happened?"

He shakes his head. "All I know is she got hit by a car on her bike last night. It was some teenagers. The one driving might have been drunk, I don't know. She died sometime after midnight at the hospital."

"How did _you_ find out?"

"Jennifer called my mom at the diner this morning and she left to go see her. Ted and Em were there when she heard and told me about it when I showed up later. I guess I figured that since Ted wasn't at work you had found out and told him not to bother coming in or something. I thought I was the last to know."

"No, Theodore just has the day off today." They've reached his car, and Brian stops and taps his fingers on the hood, thinking. "Where's Debbie now?"

"I just left her at the house frantically preparing lasagna. I'm going to go with her to take it to Jennifer's. I don't think she's okay to drive. She's a wreck. You'd think _her_ daughter had died."

"Luckily, at least your mom could make a half-decent lasagna in her sleep."

Michael gives him a look, but knows him too well to be surprised that he has to make jokes at a time like this. Brian looks down at his feet for a second, playing with his car keys in his hands.

"Has somebody called him?" he asks, his voice sounding strangely small.

Michael nods. "My mom told him. Jennifer couldn't handle it."

Brian stands there silently for a second, and then nods toward the passenger seat of his car. "Come on. I'll drive."

* * *

When they get to Debbie's house and she gets in the back of Brian's car with an enormous dish of food, she immediately starts rambling despairingly and keeps talking during the whole drive, as if to stop talking would mean giving the horrible reality of the moment a chance to actually settle in her mind. 

"...And poor Sunshine, my God," she goes on. "I didn't know how to tell him except just..._tell_ him. There _isn't_ a right way to tell somebody that. Except definitely not over the damn phone. To think, he's miles and miles away having to deal with this all by himself right now..."

Michael glances to the side at Brian, whose face is showing nothing so well that it's obvious to him it must be hiding _something _going on in his head.

When they get to the house, they see a motorcycle and a car that looks almost as expensive as Brian's in the driveway. Brian feels a little stupid for not already assuming Justin's father might be there.

But along with that comes the sudden, surprising realization that he is a little terrified to see Jennifer. Maybe he doesn't know anything of what a proper mother's love is supposed to be like from his own experiences, but Justin's mother has always seemed to him like something of an antithesis to what his own is like. He remembers then with a faint pang the day she came to see him at his loft and told him, "I need you to take my son" - _"need," _not "want." He remembers he thought then, _That is what being a parent is._ Complete selflessness. Once you create another life, nothing can be about you anymore. It's about _them_, all the time, doing everything you can just so this child can grow to be healthy and happy and whole. And he cannot imagine how a proper mother who loves her child like she's supposed to and makes so many sacrifices for them, forgetting herself and her own dreams and desires, just so they will hopefully turn out all right some day, even begins to process a loss like this and suddenly being without _them_ and just having herself. Suddenly they will never turn out okay or even be able to turn out completely fucked up and in need of therapy because everything is just over. And he can't picture what is going to be left of her after having something like that torn away. How do you look into somebody's eyes who has in the past ten hours experienced this?

Debbie is already expected to be back and goes right in without ringing the bell. Tucker appears out of a hallway, having heard them come in.

"Hi," he says quietly, for the whole house is morosely quiet. For some reason Brian unconsciously steps very lightly when he walks further into the landing area like there is some horrible sleeping monster somewhere in the house they need to be careful not to disturb.

"Jen's in the living room talking to Craig," Tucker explains. "You might not want to bother them right at the moment. Oh, thanks, Debbie, I can put that in the kitchen."

As he takes the lasagna off her hands and carefully walks away on light feet, Brian's ears begin to make out the sound of very soft speech coming from the room right down the hall. He walks forward to peek down the hallway and can see Jennifer and Craig sitting in there. It's an odd sight because they are not watching TV or drinking anything, yet he can tell somehow that they've been sitting there like this for a long time. Jennifer's hands are so still placed down in her lap.

"_Brian,_" Michael says in almost a whisper, just as he backs away before one of them can notice him there. Brian goes back to where he and Debbie are standing as Michael asks, "Is there anything we can do? You think we should just leave them alone?"

Tucker is walking back in just as Brian's cellphone rings in his pocket, breaking the stiff silence and making them all jump a little. When he looks at the caller ID and answers it with "What did you get for me?" Debbie turns away rolling her eyes and crosses herself.

But Michael walks up to his side and watches him while he listens. He gets a pad of paper and pen out from inside his blazer and Michael sees him write down "Gate 12, 4:15." Then he just says, "Okay. Right. Thanks, Cynthia," and flips his phone shut.

Debbie and Tucker are talking with low voices to each other now, and Michael opens his mouth to ask Brian something but he walks away before he gets the chance and looks into the living room again. For whatever reason, Craig has gotten up and momentarily left the room. Brian braces himself as if he's about to witness a gruesome surgical procedure instead of talk to Justin's mother, and then quietly walks into the room.

Jennifer is resting her chin on her hand and staring off into space, looking into nothing, oblivious to him coming in. He puts a hand on her shoulder and says gently, "Jen."

She takes just a split second longer to react than one would normally expect someone to, turning around very slowly. "Oh...Brian."

She's so much the complete opposite of a total wreck to behold that it's worse than seeing somebody falling apart and sobbing uncontrollably. He recognizes what it is; the pain is not quite touching her yet. She is just drifting through this right now like something dead and unfeeling, something airy and intangible that can't quite make contact with the reality just yet. The mind will do anything to protect itself. He's seen this before in Justin, when after he got bashed he seemed to become somebody else for a while who showed practically no emotion, the real Justin locked away somewhere deep inside of him where he wouldn't have to face all of that trauma. He thinks he's seen it in himself before, too.

"Jennifer, I'm so sorry," he says, and it comes out sounding wrong somehow. One of those things he is so unaccustomed to saying out loud that it sounds awkward and almost like a lie. But Jen puts her hand over his on her shoulder and just nods, not seeming to take any notice if it's not the right way to say such a thing.

"Listen, you don't have to worry about Justin getting home," he tells her. "I'm taking care of it. So he won't have to come back by himself."

"Oh...Brian, thank you. That..." She stops when she sees something behind him. Brian turns to see that Craig is standing in the hall gaping at them.

"I ought to...go," he says. He turns and walks right past Craig going back into the landing area, where Daphne, who apparently arrived while he was in the living room, has now joined the group. Craig follows him out.

"What the hell are _you_ doing here?" he demands.

The others look their way and watch the two of them nervously. Brian turns to him as he starts to get out a cigarette. "Mr. Taylor. My condolences for your loss."

He goes from looking thrown-off and confused to angry, and steps forward into his face, breathing heavily. "You dare come into this house while we are grieving when you've caused this family so much harm. And _mock_ me and my daughter's death."

"I'm not mocking you," Brian says blankly. "I'm being completely serious."

He stares at him for a long moment as if trying to figure out what kind of trick he's playing. "I do not want to see your face around here again."

Brian stops in the middle of flipping his lighter open and takes the cigarette out of his mouth he was about to light, and everyone is frozen for a moment watching him. He flips the top of the lighter back down and turns to him. "As far as I'm aware I am as welcome in your ex-wife's house as you are. And I'm afraid you are going to have to see my face around here again. Because as it so happens your son is grieving right now, too, and I'm still part of his life, which you might have known if you could say the same. And if you do anything at all while I'm here that might upset him _or_ Jennifer just because you can't handle that, I promise I will quietly drag you outside and then pay you back for all those bruises you gave me a few years ago."

Craig's eyes go wide just as Debbie suddenly comes forward anxiously and gets in between them, practically pushing Brian out of the way. "Alright, now. Mr. Taylor, we're all friends of Jennifer here. I'm Debbie; Jen and I are in PFLAG together. This is my son, Michael," she says, gesturing to him. "I'm very sorry about your daughter."

He is still staring over at Brian with a poisonous look, but Debbie's attempt to turn the atmosphere in the room back away from hostile seems to be making him calm down a little. Brian turns away from them and finally lights his cigarette. Craig looks back at Debbie as someone stares through thin air, not even giving her the honor of replying, and then turns around and leaves them.

"Uh...Let me take that, Daphne," Tucker says just to say something, taking the dish of wrapped casserole she's holding and going off to the kitchen again.

"Is there anything I can..._do?"_ Daphne asks, looking overwhelmed by everything she has just walked in on.

"Yeah," Brian says. He takes his notepad out again and tears out the paper he wrote on before, grabbing her wrist and putting it in her hand. "You can get a hold of Justin sometime soon and give him this information so he knows when and where to meet me at the airport. Okay? Thanks, dear," he adds with a smile before she can even object, bending over to peck her on the cheek and patting her on the shoulder.

"I didn't know you were going to get Sunshine!" Debbie says, looking surprised.

"That's what you do when your friends lose somebody, isn't it?" he says. "Make food for them, make their plans for them. So they don't have to worry about it."

Before he can make his way to the door, Debbie grabs him and kisses his face. Then she follows it with a light slap across his head. "But you shouldn't have talked to his father that way," she hisses quietly. "What the fuck is the matter with you?"

He ignores that and turns to Michael. "Come on, I need to change before I get to the airport."

Debbie sighs. "Daphne, do you think you could give me a ride home so I can stay here a bit longer?"

"Sure," she answers as Brian opens the door and grabs Michael by the back of his shirt to pull him along with him. "But Brian, why can't you - uh - "

The door shuts behind them.

"...call him?"

* * *

Brian is driving a little recklessly as he rushes back to Kinnetik to take Michael to his car. Every once in a while he slams on the brakes too abruptly at a stop and it pitches both of them forward in their seats a little. 

"Did you have to be like that to Justin's dad?" Michael says.

"Yes," he answers easily.

"I know he's a dick, but Christ. He just lost his daughter."

"Yeah, who he only gave a shit about because she was a nice straight girl who never did anything to hurt his poor little pride."

"Oh, come on. It's not like if it were Justin instead he just wouldn't care."

"No, but it is like_ I _wouldn't. If you're willing to treat your kids like shit while they're alive then you hardly deserve any sympathy if one of them dies."

"That's pretty fucking harsh."

"Well, I was _trying_ to be civil to him, you know, but you saw how well that went," he says, rolling down the car window to throw out his cigarette butt. "I just don't want him to be the tactless and moronic loose cannon that we know he can be at a time like this just because I'm around. I mean, this _is_ the guy who gave me a concussion rear-ending my car and beat the shit out of me right in front of his son, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember," he says in an annoyed tone. "Well, _I_ feel bad for him. And who knows? Maybe now that this has happened he'll stop being such as asshole to the one kid he has left."

Brian doesn't say anything to that, driving silently for a while as if thinking about it. When they've reached the parking lot Michael says, "I think it's good you're doing this."

Brian gives him a brief "give me a break" look.

"Because with the way things have been with you and him...I wouldn't really have thought-"

He brakes so fast by Michael's car that it cuts off his speech. "Bye, Mikey."

He gets out of the car shaking his head.

* * *

On the flight to New York, Brian thinks about strange things. He never wondered about it at the time when his father came to tell him he had cancer, but he wonders now why Jack Kinney did not seem to be afraid of death. He wonders if it is kind of similar to how Craig doesn't act that hurt when his child died last night but just goes on trying to be the big tough man all men are apparently supposed to be. He can't decide if that's a sad and unfortunate thing or not. And he wonders how many things he never fully felt just by telling himself he wasn't feeling them. 

He doesn't even think he's completely processed the idea that he's going to see Justin very soon. He's not sure why he had Daphne call him. If seeing Jennifer was something he could barely stomach, then the idea of even talking to Justin at the time just seemed impossible. Because Justin is different.

He remembers the bright white everywhere inside the hospital burning his eyes along with the tears he couldn't stop, the white of the walls and fluorescent lights and also the scarf. And then there was the red. The blood was all over him as if it was his, too, and it wasn't just Justin who had gotten hurt. Of course, in a way, it wasn't. Brian couldn't see Justin while he was recovering because he was recovering, too, and it was too much of a reminder. Yet he was drawn in there every night like a dazed sleepwalker after he'd already been out and had a few drinks and stood looking through the glass at him and seeing his reflection in it, too. The two hurt ones trying to heal apart from each other and not doing too well. He couldn't face him, couldn't face_ it, _but couldn't not go right to him anyway.

Just like right now.

At 4:25 the plane lands and Brian walks out from Gate 12 where dozens of people are sitting in seats waiting for passengers. Right in front of him a reunited couple run to each other and kiss shamelessly as if they're the only two people around, and he has the absurd thought that they must be stupid for being so happy on a day like this.

Then he looks further away at all of the seats most people are getting up from now, and sees where Justin is. He is leaning over with his face in his hands, sitting next to a tall and rake-thin young man with dark hair and plastic-framed glasses who has his hand rested on Justin's upper back. He notices Brian looking at them as he comes over and something almost like recognition comes into his face before he turns to Justin and says something that makes him look up.

When he meets eyes with Brian he gets the strange impression that he's a little shocked to see him, even though his eyes look too tired to express anything like surprise right now. His friend stands up right away as if he suddenly feels like he's in the way, and he walks up to meet Brian.

"Luke?" he assumes.

He smiles weakly. "Brian?"

He nods and glances over Luke's shoulder at Justin. "Is he...?" He's not sure what the right question is to ask, because of course he's not okay, but Luke seems to understand.

"He's...tough," he just says.

Brian almost laughs and tells him, "You have no idea." Instead he just looks over at him rubbing his eyes with his palms and says quietly, "Yeah, he definitely is that."

"He wanted to just walk here on his own since I'd already stayed with him all afternoon, but I told him to shut the fuck up and drove him," Luke explains. "I'm glad I just happened to be with him when he got the call."

Brian realizes at that moment that maybe it was stupid to assume Justin would be alone, and he shouldn't be surprised at all to see Luke here with him. All he could think about after Michael showed up at his office and told him was getting to Justin as soon as he could because he needed somebody there. For a split second he has conflicting thoughts - _I guess you're not that needed_ and _It doesn't fucking matter you asshole_ - but he pushes them out of mind.

"Well...thanks for bringing him," he says.

"Sure."

Luke turns around and goes back to Justin. "Babe? You call me sometime when you can." He gives the smallest nod as Luke bends over and kisses him on the head. "Bye."

Then he walks off, and it's just them. Justin stands up even though it looks like it takes a great amount of effort to and looks up at him. Brian doesn't want him to think he has to say anything so he does the only thing he can think of to do - pulls him forward and holds him. Justin makes a sound kind of like a gasp and sigh at the same time and clutches him around the chest so hard he can barely breathe, and this time it's not like friends or brothers or fathers and sons hug each other, but their way. And they sink into the familiarity of it like everything that has changed in between the past and now is nothing and there is just this, the place they come home to. Maybe it's just in his head, but Justin seems smaller and thinner in his arms than Brian thinks he remembers from such a long time ago; he can feel all his bones under the fabric of his clothes.

They stay that way for a long time, Justin wrinkling Brian's shirt grabbing handfuls of it, before he lowers his arms and steps back a little.

"How long do we have until the flight leaves?" he asks, his voice sounding strained.

Brian looks at his watch. "About forty minutes."

They sit down together and Justin leans to the side against the large pillar his chair is next to and closes his eyes like he has a bad headache. Brian notices then that his shirt is on inside-out. Suddenly a clear picture of how it happened comes into his mind: he and Luke dancing around his tiny apartment to the Velvet Underground or something like that blasting from a cheap stereo, laughing and goofing off, having fun together in the way two people can only if they are both still young, and just starting to playfully pull each other's clothes off when Justin's phone rings to give the bad news. And he has to tell himself a second time that it doesn't matter to him even without Molly Taylor having just died, much less at a time like this.

Justin sits up for a moment. "Do you know much about what happened? Debbie didn't tell me a lot...I mean...I don't know if it happened really fast or if she actually...was conscious through it all..."

Although he can't seem to say it exactly how he means, Brian knows what he's asking is if she felt any fear or pain for long. "I'm sorry, I don't really know," he says. "Michael did say she didn't die until she'd been taken to the hospital. And that was around midnight."

Justin nods and then looks away from him, leaning over and resting his chin on his fist. He keeps looking away from him for a very long time. Finally Brian starts feeling restless and puts a hand on his shoulder.

"Come on, Justin, it's just me. You can bawl your eyes out if you need to, I won't care."

He turns back toward him with a laugh that is like what a laugh should never, ever sound like. "Thanks...I'm just...I don't know, it's like right at this moment it just feels kind of like a sick joke. It just won't sink in that it actually happened even though...I know..."

Brian nods.

"And if I start I know I won't be able to stop for another two hours, so it's probably for the better," he adds. He sits back against the back of the chair and crosses his arms, and for a while he sits there rubbing and itching his arms just a little like he can't quite sit still.

After a few minutes, he looks to the side at Brian. "I'm glad it was you who came."

"Daphne didn't tell you I was coming?" he asks.

"I'd gone outside for a minute and Luke answered my phone for me and took the message. She just told him a friend of mine would be meeting me. I didn't think...I don't know, I just wasn't expecting it to be you."

Brian suddenly feels a deep ache settling into him. Justin puts his arms down, and he reaches over and takes his hand. Justin doesn't meet eyes with him again, but holds it tightly in his lap.

Then they just wait while other people move past and around them, and the world feels so quiet.


	5. Part IV

After they get back and Brian takes Justin to his mom's, the rest of the day ticks by agonizingly one second at a time until it is finally very late into the night and feels like it's been three days since the last morning. Brian is still awake when someone knocks on his door at 2:50 AM. When he opens it tiredly rubbing one eye and sees Debbie standing there with a dish of tuna macaroni casserole, he says right away in an exhausted voice, "Oh, _fuck yes._"

As she comes into the loft she explains, "I got so busy cooking some chicken parmesan to bring for Justin tomorrow and food to feed my own house that I figured I might as well take care of you, too."

"Just hang on a second," he says, going to the end of the room to get into his stash drawer. "I'm going to have to roll one."

For the first couple minutes they sit at the counter smoking the joint together, they don't say anything at all. Then Brian stares into the air in that way people do when they're looking far back into the past, and says, "You remember that guy Mikey and I went to school with who died in the middle of our senior year?"

"The one who was in a car accident?" she asks.

"Yeah. Tony...Ficeli. That was his name. I keep thinking about him now. I still remember the morning after that happened. I think I'd slept over at your house the night before; me and Michael went to school together. We got there about ten minutes late and there were still a whole lot of kids out in the halls talking. I think it was this guy named Derek Holland who came up to talk to us and we said, 'What's going on?' and he just said, 'Tony died.' Even though it was a perfectly logical explanation all I could think was he had to be shitting me. I remember there were all these girls who had barely even known him hugging each other and crying in the halls. That whole day it was like the entire school had suddenly been contaminated with the post-mature realization that he existed and was a really great guy."

Debbie just sits silently, like she's remembering back to the time herself.

"I guess it's just different when this happens to people who are still young," he says. "Maybe most of the kids in that school didn't really care about him while he was alive, but when those things happen it's kind of like a reality check. Because even if you didn't really know him, he was just kind of one of us. And then when he died we were forced to realize that just because we're young it doesn't mean we're invincible. _Everybody_ was affected by that."

"Even you?" Debbie asks in a sarcastically shocked voice.

He gets an annoyed look on his face and says, "I _knew_ Tony." Then he takes in one very long drag, inhaling it almost angrily, and breathes it out in one quick breath. "I mean, what the hell kind of world is this? To imagine there are these assholes who would actually tell you these things happen for a reason. What's one good reason this should happen to a thirteen-year-old girl?"

Debbie just shakes her head. "This is the reason: that kid and his friends were being too rowdy and he was driving too fast, and he didn't even think to check the crosswalk before turning around that corner."

"That's a good Catholic girl's explanation, huh?"

"Yes. Of course, it helps us to imagine it's all part of some kind of divine intervention, some plan that will all work out for the greater good. And sometimes it helps to just blame ourselves and find any kind of reason to say, 'It was my fault.' It gives us a sense of control over it...the illusion that we can keep it from happening again to somebody else. But you _can't_ prevent all these things. Shit just happens, and often it's not anybody's fault or responsibility. All you can do is live life to its fullest and hold dear the people who mean the most to you. Tell the people you love that you love them. Every day." She stands up and starts going through some drawers until she finds some forks, and takes out two. "Fuck, who do I think I'm talking to? You're not going to do any of those things."

Brian laughs quietly. "Believe it or not, I just might have managed to learn a thing or two from Vic's very unexpected departure."

"I wasn't really thinking about Vic," she says, staring at him with her hand on her hip the way he remembers she used to stare at Michael waiting for him to admit something like "Okay, so I _wasn't_ actually out studying." _How does she always know?_ he used to wonder in amazement.

Brian doesn't seem to want to acknowledge where she's trying to steer the subject, so she has to go on herself. "Michael's told me how you and Sunshine haven't exactly been on frequent speaking terms," she says as she sits back down.

"Goddamn it, Deb," he sighs. "This is no time to-"

"Of course it is," she interrupts. "When else are you going to think about it? When it's too late?"

He annoyedly taps his knuckles on the counter. "Micheal needs to keep his fucking mouth shut."

"He just doesn't like watching you do these things to yourself. And neither do I."

"Then look away," he says with a kind of finality, telling Debbie it's the end of that conversation.

She shakes her head, taking the joint from him. "Did you ever read _All The King's Men_?"

It's such an irrelevant question that Brian takes a second to react and then laughs. "Yeah, like in tenth grade."

"That's one of the only things I remember reading in high school," she reflects. "I remember it had all these...philosophical ideas in it. About how you can only make good out of bad."

"Because there's nothing else to make it out of," Brian says.

"That's right. You can't get anything good done without ever getting your hands dirty, and that's why nobody is free of sin. And you cannot just have the good things. You have to take the bad with it. When my English teacher explained this to my class I remember thinking it sounded like an awfully negative point of view to have about the world. But you know, it can also be kind of optimistic. Just look at everything that happened between you and Justin that wouldn't have if he didn't get hurt. These terrible things happen to people, and it's so hard to think how there could be a good reason. I _wouldn't_ say there is and that's why they happen, but that doesn't mean you can't see how sometimes good things can result from bad. It just depends on what you make of it."

Brian takes another drag on the joint and exhales slowly, looking up thoughtfully. "Wasn't that book about a corrupt politician?"

She looks annoyed. "So what?"

"Well Debbie, you're comparing apples and oranges here. Robert Penn Warren was writing about human nature. Good intentions and bad intentions. Decency and sin. You're talking about all the good and bad shit everybody has to go through in life, and that's not the same thing."

"Well, you can still see it the same way," she says agitatedly. "That character in it was always talking about dirt. How there's nothing in the whole world that didn't come from dirt. We live on it. Trees grow out of it. The ocean is nothing but dirt on the bottom. And even a diamond is just a piece of dirt that got hot. But you see...you can choose to just say it's dirt, or you can say it's a diamond. Who cares where it came from anyway?

"Maybe what you and Justin had didn't start out so pretty and you went through some pretty tough times as a result of meeting each other. You finally opened yourself up to somebody and it turned out so bad it seemed crazy to actually allow yourself to have that kind of vulnerability again. Must have been kind of like...I don't know. Being terrified of dogs your whole life and then one day deciding to try petting one and just starting to think, _Hey, this isn't so bad_ right before you almost get your hand bitten off."

Brian immediately starts snickering at the comparison.

"What? Shut up and listen, I'm trying to-"

"Give me a lecture," he says.

"Damn right I am...What was I talking about?"

"Um..." Brian reaches across the counter to pick up one of the forks she got out. "Petting."

Then she laughs a little too, taking the lid off of the casserole and pushing it across the table so it's sitting in between them.

"So..." Debbie continues, forking out a bite. "I know a lot of the time it's been hard going through all the things that came along with being in a relationship. That doesn't make it a bad thing that you met. When he's away in New York and you're missing him, is it all those bad things that happened you think about? Are you _relieved_ that you're not together having to deal with that? Or do you just remember how good it was having him here with you when you woke up in the morning?"

Brian stares off into the air, not answering just as she expected.

"You and him really love each other," she continues, "and that alone means you have something that some people never even find in their whole lives. It's like you've found this diamond amidst a bunch of dirt, something that could mean the difference between you having a good life and a bad one. But you're just casting it aside, because you think it's just more dirt, and that's all life is. But life doesn't have to be nothing but endless suffering if you've got the balls to do what it takes to be happy when you actually have the chance."

He takes a bite of tuna and macaroni and finally after he finishes chewing says with that exaggeratedly big smile of his, "As much fun as it is getting stoned and philosophizing with you over macaroni, I think you really don't know anything about it and should mind your own fucking business."

But the way she keeps looking at him, he might as well be in an interrogation room under bright lights being mercilessly questioned until he confesses to everything. She doesn't even have to ask any questions. After a moment of shifting in his seat uncomfortably he just spills out what's on his mind. "He's been seeing this other kid, you know. Luke."

"Okay," she says flatly. "Big deal. You've probably been with a hundred other guys since he left."

"But it's not that kind of thing. They don't just get together and fuck. They hang out. They go to movies. They visit each other even when one of them is sick and fucking is out of the question. And bring _orange juice._ As in they actually give a shit about each other."

"I'm sure if it was something serious you're not the only one who would have heard about him."

"That's the thing, he hasn't actually told me. I just know. And maybe he hasn't told me because it's nothing. Or maybe he hasn't because it's _something_, or could be, if I wasn't the only obstruction getting in the way."

"So?"

"So?" he repeats, looking in disbelief that she would act like it doesn't even matter. "_So_ he's not just some other Ethan Gold who's full of shit. He's worse than that, because he actually seems like a good guy. He seems...good for him," he finishes in a quieter voice.

"You mean better for him than you?" she asks.

Brian looks down and forks a huge amount of casserole in his mouth, not meeting eyes with her.

"So maybe he is," she says. "But you know what? Tough shit. You can't decide that for him. He's an adult. If he wanted to be with this guy Luke or with anybody else, then he would be. But he wants to be with you. Even if it's not so easy when you live far apart. And why don't you just admit that it's not even just about this one guy? Is it?"

Brian looks up at her like he doesn't understand anything she just said. "What?"

"I bet he isn't even important, but it's what he represents that you're afraid of. That there's always going to be some other guy out there Justin could meet who's younger than you, more like him than you, and more suitable for him than you."

"So then why the fuck should he be with me?" Brian asks. "And why should I actually believe he'll always _want_ to be with me?"

"Because that's the only way anybody can ever end up being happy with somebody else. Honey, this is the truth: Sunshine will tell you if you ask him that he's never going to love anybody else like he loves you, and you'll want to tell him he can't know that for sure, and guess what? You're absolutely right. You _don't _know. And it's got nothing to do with him being younger than you and unexperienced, either. The same exact same thing goes for you and the question of whether or not you'll always feel the same way. That's just life. If you think that's any reason to not even try, then you're doing a good job of ensuring that you'll be living the rest of your miserable and pathetic life alone."

With that said, Debbie exhales heavily as if catching her breath after such a long-winded verbal beating, and looks around until she sees a clock. "Well, shit. I have to go into work in four and a half hours."

"At least the business at the diner hasn't been fucked up the ass because of the unfortunate situation today. I'll be lucky if I didn't lose our account with Warner Home Security."

"You really care?"

He looks upward for a second like thinking about it for the first time. "No. Not really."

She suddenly smiles very warmly at him as she stands up. "You're not going to do what I've been afraid you're going to do."

"What's that?"

"Decide to be there for Justin today and pull one of your disappearing acts the next day."

He leans back in his seat, unrolling his sleeves, and just bites his lip for a second. "No. I'm not going to do that. Even though I might wake up tomorrow and want to."

Debbie stands there and keeps looking at him that way, practically beaming at him. Brian has only seen her look that way at someone a few times before, and it was at her son, not him. It's so strange to see it almost makes him feel uncomfortable.

"You know something, Brian Kinney?" she says, like she's noticing something about him right now that she never even saw before.

"...What?"

She kisses her fingers and presses them to his cheek. "You deserve to be loved."

Then she turns and goes out the door, leaving him sitting there alone to wonder if she has any idea that she was just the first person to ever tell him anything like that. At that moment it is like a tiny flower bud has just been planted in the dead, barren wasteland of his childhood where rains no longer fall anyway. Probably too late, but maybe still worthwhile. He leans forward, crossing his arms on top of the counter, and says quietly to the dark room, "Thanks, ma."

* * *

When Brian comes into the diner the next morning, Ted and Emmett are sitting across from each other at a booth. Without a word of greeting he sits next to Ted and pushes him to the side sliding further into the seat. 

"...And I told him he should take it easy," Ted says, continuing with whatever he was saying to Emmett before he came in and rolling his eyes as he moves his breakfast and cup of coffee over so he can reach them from his new sitting position. "But he went in today anyway. What can I say? Blake really takes his job seriously. I just hope he doesn't make himself more sick."

"Uh-huh," Emmett says, not sounding very interested. "Hey, Brian. How's, um...How's Justin doing?"

"How do you think he's doing?" Brian says. "Hey, Deb! Coffee!"

"Yeah, I see you!" Debbie calls back from behind the counter.

"It's just nobody's seen him yet but you and Debbie," Emmett says. "God, I just feel terrible for him. The poor baby. What can you do?"

"Why don't you go see him yourself?" Brian asks.

"He won't be at home," Ted says. "Debbie said he's helping his parents take care of the funeral arrangements today."

He nods. Then he takes a quick glance around the restaurant. "Did Michael decide to sleep in or something?"

"He's at the store," Emmett says.

"It's not even open this early."

"Yeah, but he had a lot of inventory he should have been working on yesterday and didn't get a chance to, so he went in early."

"By the way, when are you supposed to be getting to the airport?" Ted asks.

"Airport?" Brian says, confused, and then remembers, his mouth dropping open. He looks up at the clock. "Fuck. The munchers."

* * *

When Brian reaches the area of the airport right outside the gate where Melanie and Lindsay's plane came in, Mel sees him coming first and stands up with a pissed-off look on her face to walk toward him. 

"About time, asshole!" she yells. "You were supposed to be here almost an hour ago! Maybe you've got nothing more important to worry about than getting a couple blow jobs on the way over here, but we've got two hungry, whining kids here-"

She is shocked into suddenly going quiet when he calmly walks forward and pulls her into a quick hug. "Nice to see you, too," he says. "Mind watching your language around the kids?"

"What's gotten into _you?_" she asks as he then walks past her to where the others are.

"Hey, Gus!" he says brightly, grabbing him and picking him up. "Did you miss your old man? Huh?"

Gus giggles loudly as he spins around in circles holding him up in the air.

"Holy shit! When did you get so heavy?" he asks, putting him back down.

"So much for watching language," Melanie mutters.

"Hey, Bri," Lindsay says, coming forward to kiss him and then hugging him tightly. "What took you so long anyway?"

"Never mind," he says. "Everything's been kind of...intense."

"And where's Michael?" Melanie says, picking up Jenny Rebecca in her carrier from the seat and taking her suitcase in the other hand. "I thought he'd be here."

"He's a little tied up at the store."

"Too much to come meet his daughter? What's going on? Did you and him trade personalities or something?"

"I wish you _could_ every once in a while," Lindsay says to him as she takes Gus's hand and they all start walking together. "Then maybe we'd hear from you more than once a month, and you'd call Justin often enough for him to know when we're coming over."

"You could have called him yourself," he says, "and you can stop before you chew me another one about that because Debbie and Michael both already did, and he didn't even have the free time to come visit. And because he's here anyway."

"What?" Melanie says, looking like she's trying to figure out how that statement made the least bit of sense.

Brian's pace of walking slows, and they both turn their heads to look at him. "His sister died."

They stop walking but the looks on their faces don't change at first, just frozen the way they were for a moment. Then as they realize he's totally serious, their smiles fall.

"Oh my God," says Lindsay.

They just stand that way for a few seconds, and then Gus pulls on Lindsay's hand. "Mommy? What's the matter?"

She just pulls him closer to her and runs a hand over his hair.

"How did it happen?" Melanie asks.

Brian tells them everything as they walk out of the airport and to his car, and Gus just lags a little behind the whole time chewing on his fingers.

"Are you guys still supposed to stay at Debbie's?" Brian asks when they reach the car. "Cause she's not at home now."

"She said Carl would be," Lindsay says, starting to load their suitcases into his trunk when he pops it open.

Gus starts walking around the car.

"Gus, don't wander off," says Melanie.

"Where we going?" he mumbles with his fingers still in his mouth.

"We told you, sweetie, to Grandma Debbie's house."

As Brian closes the trunk, it takes him a few seconds to even think twice about the fact that Melanie just referred to Debbie as "Grandma" to Gus, as if he forgot for a second that Gus isn't really related to her.

"Hey, come here, Gus," Brian says, motioning him to come over and then picking him up. "You want to ride with Daddy?"

Lindsay looks at Melanie. "You feel like driving? I can take JR."

As much as she looks like she doesn't want to, Melanie has always been able to tell when Lindsay wants to talk to Brian in some measure of confidence, so she hands JR to her and turns to Brian to get the keys.

Lindsay and Brian ride in the back with Gus in between them, mostly silent at first. Then Lindsay asks quietly, "Did you ever meet her?"

Brian thinks for a moment and then answers, "Just a couple times. When I was over at Jennifer's house to take care of some business stuff. She didn't say much."

"I never saw her even once. A lot of the time I forgot Justin even had a sister." She looks up into his face. "How's he holding up?"

He just shrugs. "Normally, I guess."

"And his mother? Have you seen her?"

"Only for a minute. Hard to say."

Lindsay looks forward and shakes her head. "God, to think. Both of my children mean the world to me. I can't even begin to imagine losing one of them."

Brian says nothing, but his eyes seem to glaze over in that moment like he's so deep in thought he doesn't see anything in front of him. Then Gus scoots over close to him and leans over to peer out the window.

"You remember fabulous old Pittsburgh, Gus?" Brian says, putting his left arm around him. As they keep riding he can't seem to stop touching Gus, picking a little piece of lint off of his shirt or just idly running the tips of his fingers through his hair, which has gotten to be the exact same color as his own.

"I _have _called Justin, you know," Lindsay says. "I've talked to him quite a lot."

He looks up at her. "Great."

"We crazy lesbians know a lot more about what goes on in Pittsburgh and New York than you may think," she says.

He just smiles. "Then I guess I owe you a thank-you for not giving me a hard time about some of the things you've probably heard."

She smiles back. "I think you already give yourself enough of a hard time." Then she laughs a little, in a way that is not really expressing amusement but just perhaps some other emotion she can't contain. "God...I've missed you, asshole."

He just smirks. Then Gus starts giggling about something, and he looks down and sees him with his hand stuffed down the pocket of his jacket.

"Hey!" Brian says with a laugh. "What are you doing in my pockets?"

He reaches around and tickles Gus in his side, making him laugh even louder and squirm around on the seat as his hand comes out of the pocket holding his leather-bound notepad and a condom.

"Oh, goodness, looky what you found," Lindsay says, taking the condom and quickly replacing it in Brian's pocket.

"Here, Gus," Brian says, taking the notepad and flipping it open and getting a pen out of his other pocket. "We can play a game. You ever played hangman?"

"No," Gus says.

"Not ever? What do these two dykes teach you?"

"His favorite game is Twister," Melanie says from the driver's seat.

"Ah, taking after his daddy already. I had some Twister bedsheets once."

Melanie makes a sound of disgust while Lindsay just laughs and says, "Oh, kinky."

After Brian has explained the rules of hangman to Gus and finished two games with him, he gets distracted by something out the window again and Brian looks at Lindsay. "I have to go to work after this, and then I'll call you."

"Okay. Mel and I are having dinner with her mom tonight, but you could take Gus for the evening if you wanted."

He nods. Then, having a thought, he asks, "Will you guys stay to go to the funeral, whenever it is?"

"...Yeah. We'll stay."

She sees him looking down at Gus again, who is now leaning forward and looking ahead through the front window.

"He's missed you, too," she tells him in a soft voice.

Brian just stares forward in silence as Melanie turns the car onto Debbie's street.  
.


	6. Part V

The next day Brian comes into the diner after work to find Michael, Ben, Melanie, and Lindsay seated at the front counter with the kids.

"Hello, ladies," he says, sitting at the last available seat next to Michael.

Most of them acknowledge him with a nod or wave.

"Honey," Melanie says to Lindsay, "if Ben and Michael are going to have JR tonight anyway we might as well take Emmett and Ted up on their offer to go out with them tonight."

"Oh, yeah," Lindsay says. "I bet Debbie would be more than happy to look after Gus. How long has it been since we've been able to go out to the bars?"

"Oh, I see how it is," Michael says jokingly. "You guys all go off and have fun while we do all the responsible Mom and Dad work."

They laugh and Ben says, "No, we're happy to take her."

"Yeah," says Michael, moving JR's carrier sitting on the counter to be facing him. "Hell with Woody's. I get to spend all night with this gorgeous girl."

"Well, congratulations, Jenny R," Brian says, looking at her. "You're officially the only 'gorgeous girl' that Michael Novotny is ever going to spend a night with."

"Or ever going to want to, I hope," Ben says with a laugh.

"So, Brian," Lindsay says while wiping some ketchup off of Gus's face with a napkin, "we were going to go to the park before it starts to get dark. You with us?"

"Yeah," he says, signaling to the waiter in front to bring him some coffee.

Lindsay waits a moment before then asking, "You think we should go by Jennifer's and see if Justin wants to come? He hasn't had a chance to see us or either of the kids."

He looks over at her. "You think he'll want to?"

"Well, it might be good for him to get out of the house for a while. He's had a couple days now with nothing to do but deal with what's happened. I could be wrong, but I would imagine that after a while it would start to feel like you just can't get away from it."

"That's a good point," Ben agrees. "He may not particularly enjoy doing anything right now, but he could probably use a break from just being at the house where he's surrounded by it."

Brian shrugs, sipping his coffee. "Okay."

Before they leave, Melanie and Lindsay each remind Michael and Ben of several things they have to make sure to do or not do with JR in their care, to which they have to say, "Yeah, we know, don't worry," multiple times.

When Brian pulls up to Jennifer's house he is glad to see no other visitors' cars there. As he unbuckles his seatbelt, Lindsay turns to him.

"Maybe we shouldn't all go in," she says.

"Might be a little overwhelming," Melanie says. "Three of us and a kid showing up unannounced."

They are both looking at him, so he doesn't have to ask who's going to go inside. After he gets out and is in front of the door ringing the bell, he hears none of that inner noise of reaction and response one usually hears that tells them someone heard and is coming to the door. He is surprised when after that silence it opens, answered by Debbie.

She looks at him and opens the storm door to let him in without a word. If it's possible, the house sounds even more silent than it did the last time he was here, possibly just because there are not so many people congregated in one area of it like before. He looks around for signs of where anyone else might be. Then Debbie just says quietly, "Upstairs," pointing upward with a finger, and then leaves to go into the hall and back to wherever she was before.

After Brian goes up the stairs and reaches the hall on the top floor, the first door he comes to is open, and when he glances inside his stomach feels like it's falling to the floor for a second and he stops walking as if momentarily paralyzed. In a second his eyes take in bright purple bedsheets, a _Chicago_ poster, a junior high school level science book, a white porcelain jewelry box with cheap necklaces hanging out. Some things look a little disturbed, like someone has been in here since she was here last moving things where they don't quite belong, or at least where a 13-year-old girl would not have put them, but for the most part it seems untouched. When Ted was in a coma and might have died his friends had to remove his potentially embarrassing possessions from his apartment before they were found. But nobody could have known what was going to happen to Molly. There is nothing here but an honest, uninterfered look at what she was, and now it is all her loved ones have left of her. But all these things are only the past, not at all what she would have become: advanced microbiology, diamond studs from some nice boyfriend for Valentine's Day in place of the tacky necklaces, black and white photography of locations in France accompanying the movie posters on the walls. Maybe. They will never know.

He is distracted by the sound of pages rustling from the next room and walks on to the next door, which is slightly agape. It is open enough for him to look in and see Justin sitting at a desk looking through what looks like an old school yearbook. He pushes the door open a little more, knocking softly on one side of the doorway, and Justin looks up.

"Oh. Hey." He closes the book and sets it on the desk, turning toward him as he walks in. He seems very different from when Brian saw him when they flew back from New York together, more like the blank page he was for a while after he was bashed but not quite that frighteningly not-Justin. It is a little like seeing the sun with all of the light pulled out of it.

Brian comes in and sits down on the bed in front of him, and doesn't start talking right away. It is like how it used to be when they saw each other, when Justin would come over to the loft just to come over, and didn't have to say anything like "I thought you might want to go to Woody's together," and if he didn't say what he came over for Brian wouldn't say anything like "So what's up?" Except at the same time it's not anything like that. Everything is different. Maybe it just feels the same as it was in the past because they want it to be the same way, and Justin hasn't asked what he's doing here because he doesn't want the day to have come when he feels the need to ask that instead of just accepting the irrepressible force that brings them to each other again and again.

"Oh, yeah," Justin says again, standing up, like he's remembering something. "I've got something for you."

Unable to imagine what Justin would have to give him, he watches him go around the bed and pick up the carry-on he brought on the plane with him and open it up. "I had no idea this was in here. I thought I'd lost it. But anyway, I found it while I was getting some stuff out of here."

He takes out a CD case and throws in onto the bed in front of him. Brian picks it up, opens it, and sees it's a burned CD with a track listing written out on an insert in Justin's loose, flowy handwriting.

"I made that forever ago as your birthday present."

"A mix CD?" he asks. "That's so very...uh..."

"High schooler, I know," Justin says in a tone that seems to be missing something. If it was another kind of time, he would be laughing a little as he said it; Brian can hear it clearly in his head. "Though I guess when _you _were in high school they made tapes. Anyway, I didn't have a whole lot of money to throw around that month, you know. I thought I would be able to be home the weekend of your birthday, but it turned out I couldn't be, so I figured I'd just give it to you whenever."

Brian nods and puts the CD in his pocket. "I'm sure it'll play just fine even though I'm already a year older."

Justin starts looking through the other contents of his bag. "Man...He didn't even put any socks in here. Luke packed my bag for me. Fortunately I still have _some_ clothes I keep in this room."

"Good thing he was with you," Brian says.

Justin must hear something in his voice, because he looks up at his face for a couple seconds' delay before responding. "...Yeah. He was just on his way out, too. I was in the bathroom about to get in the shower and he told me my phone was ringing."

Brian remembers his shirt on inside-out. There is a silence for a moment not quite as comfortable as the one there when he first came in. Then he asks, "You feel like getting out of here for a while?"

Justin doesn't answer for a moment, thinking about it, and then sounds surprised by his answer when he says it. "...Yes. _Please._"

They go downstairs and Justin gets his jacket and goes right outside, but Brian heads toward the living room to find somebody to notify that he's stealing Justin for an hour or two. Before he makes his way there, he spots Emmett standing near the entrance of the kitchen facing away from him, leaning against a counter with his arms crossed, completely still like he's off in his own world. Brian walks up behind him quietly and gooses him, making him whip around with a huge gasp, his hand flying to his heart.

_"Jesus Christ!"_ he practically growls at him in an angry whisper, hitting him on the chest.

"What are you doing spooking around here?" Brian asks with an amused smile.

Emmett waits a moment for his heart rate to return to normal, and then puts his hands on his hips and says a little defiantly, "Making coffee. I came along with Debbie. To see Justin."

"He was up in his room."

"I _know,_" he says, looking annoyed again. "I already talked to him. Now Debbie's in there helping Jennifer and these two girls who were friends of Molly pick out pictures to have out at the visitation."

"Oh. When is it?"

"Tomorrow. And the funeral's on Friday." He turns to look at the coffee pot as it starts steaming and making a final bubbling noise. "You want a cup?"

"No, I'm just about to leave. Tell the others Justin went out with me and the girls for a while."

There is a playground outside a school a couple blocks from where Jennifer lives, so they decide to walk there. For a while Brian walks in front with Gus riding on his shoulders while Justin talks with Lindsay and Melanie.

"You know that painting you gave us before we left?" Lindsay asks.

"Don't tell me you actually kept that thing," he says, and Melanie laughs softly and hits his arm.

"Yes," Lindsay continues, "and we hung it right in the landing area so it's the first thing you see when you come inside our house. We haven't had one visitor yet who hasn't asked about it."

"Asked what? 'Is that one of your kid's finger paintings? How cute.'"

"Oh, stop," Melanie says. "It feels pretty nice being able to brag about your friend in America who's aspiring to be New York's next great artist and how we own a painting that could be worth a fortune some day."

Brian turns around and walks backwards for a second to say, "Don't listen to him. He _knows_ he's a talented little shit no matter what he says."

"_Brian_," says Lindsay scoldingly. "Gus, don't listen to your father's foul mouth, okay?"

"Okay, mommy," Gus says, although he seems too distracted looking up in the trees as they pass them to have even heard anything he said. Suddenly he says excitedly, "Daddy, look!"

"What?" Brian says, mimicking his excited tone and looking up to where he's pointing in the tree they're passing. "Well, somebody got their shoe stuck up there, didn't they?" he observes.

"Can I climb up and get it?"

Melanie laughs. "No, baby, it's probably really dirty."

"That was creepy," Brian says, looking at her. "I was about to answer in almost the exact same way."

She laughs again. "Oh yeah, you being a normal parent? That _is_ creepy."

In response to that he playfully kicks her leg with his foot.

For the first time in what feels like forever, Justin can feel a small smile creeping onto his face as he watches Brian carrying Gus. He forgot how beautiful it was to see them together. He has often wondered if he ever would have fallen so hopelessly in love with Brian if Gus hadn't happened to be born that night they met. Up until the moment they ran into that hospital room, Brian seemed to him like something godlike and invincible, so much unlike him that he intimidated him. When he first walked into his loft, he was so scared with him he could practically hear his heart pounding in his ears. But then after they went to the hospital, Justin saw how awe-struck he looked standing there looking at his newborn child, and how he seemed almost scared when he took him into his arms and held him so carefully. Someone like him scared by such a tiny little thing; he never would have thought. It was the same way when he handled Justin later that night; he was so surprisingly gentle and careful, making it strange to remember later how nervous and afraid he had been before. And Justin realized he was not what he appeared to be at first, what he perhaps wanted to be. He was just a man. He was human, and felt things the same way anybody else did. And maybe he needed someone to help him realize that himself, tell him the things about himself he was unable to see like "You're not your father. You love your son."

It was no wonder that after he woke up from the coma four years ago unable to remember what had happened to him and suddenly everything was threatening and frightening to him, Brian was the only thing he felt safe about, the only one he could trust enough to let near him. At first he appeared emotionless and distant, practically unaffected, and when Justin asked him why he never came to see him he would just shrug it off with some careless answer that didn't at all reflect the seriousness of what had happened. Then after Gus's birthday party when he surprised him by saying, "You really freaked me out," finally giving up the invulnerable exterior, and he found the blood-stained scarf under his clothes where he was wearing it like it was part of him, he thought he understood in a way. And after that they did perhaps for the first time what they would both call making love, at last feeling and healing together, and that was when he knew this all had hurt Brian just as much as it hurt him. He surprised him as much as he had the first time. As they lay curled together and connected it was like everything that had been going on inside each of them melded together so there was no hiding it anymore, and no carrying the weight of it around alone anymore.

Lindsay has noticed that he's gone quiet, and she tacitly puts an arms around his shoulders, walking close to him. He looks at her with an attempted smile.

"Okay, big boy," Brian says, lifting Gus up over his head. "Daddy's got to put you down. You're not as little as you used to be."

They have reached the block where the school is, and Gus runs off ahead of them to get to the playground. As they near a pair of benches, Brian drapes an arm around Justin's neck to pull him along with him as he goes to one and sits down. Melanie and Lindsay sit together on the one beside it. They watch Gus quietly a while as he plays on the slide.

"I can't believe how much bigger he's gotten," Brian says. "Just over seven months."

Justin does not miss the veiled sadness in his voice. "I know."

Brian looks back at him and says, "I came by last night to see how you were doing, but all the lights were out."

"Yeah, Tucker convinced my mom and I to try to finally get some sleep. We'd barely had any in the last...forty hours." He looks around at the playground which is sparcely filled with a couple other children and parents. "It's so weird to be out here and see that everything's going on just like before. In the house it feels like the world has just stopped."

He puts his feet up on the bench, putting his arms around his knees, and looks back at Brian. "I think I really did need to get out for a while. I've been almost going crazy just sitting around not wanting to do anything but not being able to stand having nothing to distract myself either. It just feels so _still_...there's got to be a better word to describe it, but it's almost really..._boring._"

Brian shrugs. "I guess that makes a certain kind of sense."

Justin's face changes a little, suddenly a shadow of a normal expression of amusement. "I saw Daph earlier today. She told me you had a few words with my father."

Brian almost looks a little embarassed. "Yeah. Just a few."

"I hope he wasn't being _too_ much of an asshole."

He shrugs. "Well, he wasn't very happy to see me and wouldn't leave it alone. So I just had to get a little confrontational myself."

Justin is quiet in thought for a second, and asks, "But will you come to the funeral?"

"Yeah. Why wouldn't I? Everyone else is going to go, and I'm not going to stay out of the picture just because of him. That's why I had to tell him to just deal with it and lay off me."

Justin looks vaguely surprised to hear him say that, just like he looked when he first saw him at the airport. He rests his head down on his knees, looking unusually small curled up into a ball on the bench like that. "Well, at least the reception's at my mom's."

Gus comes walking back toward them, and Lindsay automatically calls to him. "Come here, precious! Hey - how do you _always_ manage to get your face dirty?"

Brian and Justin watch as she goes and crouches in front of him, wiping some dirt off of his chin with her sleeve. Then she straightens his hat so it's covering both of his ears and kisses him on three different places on his face before letting him squirm away again.

"Gus, what are you going to do with your grandma tonight?" Brian asks.

"I want to go to the light show!"

Lindsay and Melanie both laugh.

"You want to go _again?_" Brian says. "I don't know if Debbie will be up for that. And you got scared, remember?"

"I wasn't scared!" Gus insists.

Brian laughs and Lindsay rolls her eyes at him. "Brian, I told you that was a stupid idea."

"It was Michael's idea!" he says. "And he just didn't like it during one song." He turns to Justin, who looks a little lost, and explains, "Mikey and I took him to a Pink Floyd light show at the Carnegie-Mellon planetarium last night. He got a little freaked out during 'The Great Gig In the Sky.'"

Justin shrugs. "Well, that's not a bad idea. I've always heard those things are only worth seeing if you're about five years old or stoned."

"Yeah, but even with one of those factors in the equation it's still a little lame," Brian says.

The girls both give him a look. "Brian," Lindsay says, "_please_ tell me you were not-"

"No," he interrupts. "Don't worry, mom. I swear I did not and will not ever get stoned in front of our son. At least...not until he's sixteen."

Melanie sighs, "Oh, for God sake," as Gus goes back over to them.

"Mommy, will you push me?" he asks, and it's not even clear which mommy he's addressing.

"In a minute, sweetie," Melanie answers.

"But I want to take the swing!" he says, pointing at the playground where there is only one unoccupied swing still available.

"Come on, Gus, I'll push you," Justin says, standing up.

They walk back to the playground together and then Lindsay stands up to go take his place on the bench next to Brian.

"Looks like he's going to survive okay," she says, watching both of them.

"Justin?" Brian says. "He could survive anything."

She nods. "Of course."

He stays silent for a long moment, his eyes also fixed on him far away.

"He's a lot stronger than me, at least," he admits quietly.

"What?" she says with surprise. "That's bullshit."

"What do you know?"

"Well, I know even the strongest people can't be that way without someone standing by them through the hardest times."

"If he's going to get through this okay, it's not because I'm here."

"That isn't true!" She pulls on his arm to make him look her in the face. "You have no idea what it must have meant to him that you dropped everything and flew right over to New York to be with him right after you found out. It doesn't matter how things have been between you two since he left. You still care deeply for each other, and you're one of the people he needs the most right now. If he hasn't been able to clearly express that, it's probably because it's a little awkward, what with you having been a total ass he hardly even heard from the past few months."

"I thought you'd decided not to give me a hard time about that."

She puts her hand over her mouth. "Oops."

Brian looks back over at where Justin and Gus are. "I just don't even know what the fuck I'm supposed to say. It's not like I can even pretend to understand."

It's such an oddly innocent kind of thing for Brian to say, and it makes Lindsay smile widely at him. "Yes, well, when you've been off in your Neverland all your life evading reality, no one would expect you to understand things like this," she teases. "Come on, it's not like any of us have experienced something quite like this. Hell, I was really sad when my Granny Faye died. And you remember how much it upset me when I found out my Aunt Sylvia had cancer and only months to live. But that's not quite the same as this, is it? Isn't there some saying?...Losing a parent is losing your past, losing a spouse is losing your present, losing a child is losing your future, and losing a sibling is losing your past, present, and future."

"That's cheery."

She smirks. "Don't worry. It's natural to feel like you're supposed to be able to give some kind of profound insight that will help somebody accept these things, but in the end there's really nothing you can say. But it's enough that you're just here. That you came to see him today." She pauses, realizing something. "And come to think of it, that you're actually concerned enough that I'm having to give you this kind of advice. Five years ago I never could have imagined having a conversation like this with you."

"Well, I hope I wasn't too much of a heartless prick when Aunty Sylvia died."

"You were in Mexico when it happened, remember?"

"Oh. Right." He pulls up his sleeve to show her his shell bracelet, at which she nods. "Did I at least bring you a souvenir, too?"

"No, but you sent me a postcard of a really sexy lady in a bikini on the beach. I seem to remember it bringing a smile to my face while I was so down."

He laughs.

Lindsay crosses her arms, staring off in thought a while. "You know what I thought after that happened?"

"What?"

"Well, it was a long while before I was in any state to be able to think about it in such a positive way, but...when you think about it, death is kind of an illuminating and revelatory thing. You realize love really is astonishingly powerful if it can make you hurt _that_ much."

"I could tell you that without anybody falling dead," Brian says.

"But don't you see? That's a _good_ way to look at it."

"How the hell do you figure that?"

"Because think about the other extreme. How amazingly _good_ it can also make you feel. Like the day Gus was born. It was the single happiest day of my entire life. I can't even explain it with words."

"But with both extremes in the spectrum a possibility, is it even worth it?"

"Of course it's worth it!" she says, as if even asking such a question is lunacy. "All of life is one huge risk. But I just try to be aware of that all the time. Every single day I am thankful for the life I have with my two beautiful children and a wife I am still falling more and more in love with all the time."

"I guess the dreaded Lesbian Bed Death really is just a myth."

She sighs exasperatedly. "The point is...It's important to hold onto the things you care about and keep them close. Don't just let it all slip through your fingers before you even realize what you have."

"I seem to be hearing that a lot recently in more or less the same words."

"I wonder why that could be?" she asks sarcastically.

He looks to the side at her seriously. "By the way..."

"What?"

"I...have missed you, too."

She smiles. "Well, that's a good start. And it only took you...hmm...about thirty hours to say it back," she says, looking down at her watch.

"Really."

She looks back up at him warmly, leans over and gives him a kiss on his cheek.

On the walk back to the house, Justin asks Brian for a smoke and they fall behind the others as he gets out two cigarettes, gives him one, and lights it for him. They stay walking side by side but don't say much at all. Justin remembers something Daphne said once when talking about her then-boyfriend about how you know you're really close to somebody when you don't always feel like you have to talk when you're with them. As he recalls, all he said to that was some joke about how Brian would always rather be fucking anyway. But now he thinks about quiet days they used to spend in the loft, like one afternoon when they were just hanging around with Miles Davis playing on the stereo cooking omelettes for lunch and sitting at the bar looking through magazines, and Brian once snuck up behind him while he was cracking eggs to grab him around the chest and steal a kiss, but they hardly talked at all, and when he thinks about that it makes a lot of sense.

When they reach the house, Melanie and Lindsay both say goodbye to Justin and get into the car, and Brian walks him up to the porch. They stop in front of the door and before saying anything come close together and hug, holding it for a long time, Justin taking in a long, chest-heaving breath.

When he pulls away Brian keeps his hands on his shoulders, and he says, "Um...I guess I'll see you whenever."

Brian thinks a second, and answers, "If you want to see me anytime, just come over. You know when I usually get home from work."

"I'll make sure I call first. I wouldn't want to show up when you've got a hot threeway started or something."

Brian doesn't smile or laugh. He just looks at him with an unreadable expression and then says again, "Just come over."

Justin's eyes lower to focus on some part of Brian's jacket instead of his face and he nods. Brian's hands move from his shoulders to the sides of his neck, and he leans down and kisses him. He almost expects it to feel like kissing a ghost, but Justin responsively moves his arms around his waist and for a moment it feels like the only thing warm in a world that seems to have gone cold and numb is the place where their lips are lightly touching.

Then he says, "See you," and his hands slide down both his arms, one stopping to grasp his hand for just a second, almost too briefly to be noticed, before he completely lets go of him.

When he gets in the car, where Lindsay is sitting in shotgun, she asks him, "You want to go out for a few drinks with us tonight?"

"I've got some work to do at home," he says as he starts to drive off. "But maybe for just a little while."

He did not even think about it until Justin reminded him of it, but he has not brought any guys home for days, and going to Babylon has not even crossed his mind. At work earlier that day, Cynthia's mouth was pouring out from memory a long list of important messages she had taken on the phone which barely registered in his head, and when she realized he was not really listening she actually said, "Brian, what the hell's going on? Are you okay?" Besides that, other people at Kinnetik keep acting surprised when they give him bad news in a nervous, bracing voice and he doesn't get pissed off. It is almost like he is mourning, too.


	7. Part VI

Brian has been to several funerals before. They are all pretty much the same, he thought after a while. This one is not the same.

Molly was cremated, so there is no body or even a closed casket to see, just a long table behind all of the rows of seats in the funeral home with various possessions of hers on it representing her. They remind Brian of seeing her bedroom, except it's not quite the same because these things have been chosen and neatly set up to give a specific impression of what kind of person she was. There is a pair of ice skates, an old teddy bear, a _Harry Potter_ book still bookmarked near the middle, and a wrist cast with so many signatures and drawings on it that there is hardly any white left on it. He can only guess there is some story to go along with everything here, or two, or an innumerable number of stories. Innumerable, but not infinite. Five years from now, then ten, then twenty, then forty, the ones who loved her may never stop thinking every once in a while, _How old would she have been now?_ and then doing the math in their heads, but no matter how long she is in their thoughts the number will always be stopped at 13.

Behind all of these things and some vases of flowers on the table are standing boards that are plastered with photos of her from infancy to pre-teen age, pouting with food all over her face and smiling wide in sunglasses and all dressed up in something sparkly and blue. In the very center is a framed drawing of her looking no older than eight that he can tell must have been drawn by Justin even though he's never seen it before.

When she was eight, Justin was seventeen. There was so much he did not care to get to know about him back then. All that interested him was the drawing Justin did of him. Or so he thought. There are so many things he never even thought about before this week.

Like: would it feel like you are not getting some kind of necessary closure and being able to properly say goodbye if you could not see the body? Without that, would it still not seem quite real? But the body is not really her. These things on the table are not her, either. If they were, if there was anything of her left, there would not be a bunch of young girls in the seats around him smothering their faces with tissues and sitting stiffly like they're trying to stay still, though occasionally one audible sob will escape from one of them accompanied by a little tremble of their back and someone beside them will respond by putting an arm across their shoulders.

It's different in the front row, where Justin and his parents and some other relatives of his are all sitting and hardly moving.

The night before Justin came over to the loft because he got tired of sitting alone in his room. That was what he said. Brian had an idea that with what the next day would bring looming over him he just didn't feel like thinking about it too much. He and Brian sat on the sofa watching _Breakfast At Tiffany's_ on TV with their feet up on the coffee table, each of them facing inward a little so their feet were resting closer together than they were actually sitting. Justin said things like "Holly Golightly's kind of like you" and "I fucking hate this commercial," anything but what was really on his mind. Brian didn't mind. But it bothered him a little to think that there might be some things Justin didn't feel like he could say to him. Justin was starting to fall asleep on his shoulder by the time Holly and Paul were kissing in the rain, and he nudged him back into alertness to keep him awake long enough to drive him back to the house.

When a minister gets up at the podium and starts speaking words about peace in heaven and being with Jesus that are surely meant to give some kind of comfort to all of these people, Brian's mind wanders a little after five minutes because all of it doesn't mean any more to him than a lecture on how to do an algebra equation. Like Lindsay said, there isn't really anything you can say anyway. Then one of Justin's uncles and some other people who knew her get up and share memories of Molly, including a neighbor who lived next to them when Jennifer and Craig were still married and never forgot a day when Molly was very little that she picked some flowers out of their yard and after being told that wasn't nice she tried to put them back. That story, at least, has some people laughing lightly for a second.

Then, suddenly, it's over. And it seems like unlike the other funerals Brian has been to, this one felt inadequate somehow. It is like they have all been watching a comedian for an hour and he never even got to the punchline of the joke, the answer, the reason. Because there is none.

"I totally went to middle school with one of the girls who was there," Hunter says in the back seat of Brian's car as he is driving him, Michael, and Ben to Jennifer's house afterwards. "That's fucked up, man."

"Which one?" asks Ben.

"The blond wearing green who came up and talked. Her name's Natalie...something. Beckman or something that sounds like that."

"Why is that fucked up?" Michael asks.

"I don't know, it just is. Who thought I'd run into her again at a _funeral?_"

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Ben says.

When they get to the house, they see Ted's car among the numerous ones already there, meaning Melanie, Lindsay, and Emmett are there, too. When they get inside and make their way through more flower arrangement-adorned tables and groups of people standing and talking they find them already congregated in the living room sitting together, and Justin is sitting next to Melanie with Gus watching as he draws something on the back of a magazine.

"Gus, are you bothering Justin?" Brian asks as he comes up to them.

Justin looks up. "It's okay. He asked me to play hangman."

"Oh, did he?" Brian says, laughing. "Well, try not to use too many big words," he jokes, kicking Justin's foot lightly with his own.

Justin looks at him with something that actually resembles his usual smile, and for a moment Brian feels a small trace of that warmth it used to make him feel, like something is filling him up with light. Then when the feeling passes there is just that indescribable deep ache again, and Brian doesn't know where they are. The past is so solid and understandable and the present is just an elusive mystery. But he can't think about those things right now.

Brian picks Gus up from the seat and then takes his place on the couch, setting him back down in his lap, and he rests his right arm across the back of the couch behind Justin's head, not quite touching him. A woman he recognizes as one of Justin's relatives who was sitting with him walks up in front of them with a kind smile.

"You have an adorable son," she says to him. "He looks so much like you."

Not at all used to receiving compliments like this, Brian takes a few seconds to respond, "Thanks."

Justin points to him and says, "Aunt Ellen, this is Brian."

"It's good to meet you," she says, nodding, and he nods back.

Justin then introduces the rest of his friends there, which leads his aunt to move on to admiring JR and baby-talking to her about what a pretty dress she has on. As Brian is watching this, he hears Justin mutter, "Yeah, go ahead, Dad. Give me that look like I should be hiding my freak friends in shame."

Brian looks up at him and then follows his gaze over to the entrance of the living room just in time to see Justin's father retract his gaze from their direction and move on to go to the next room. Now feeling a little uncomfortable, Brian looks back at Justin and then looks down, picking up his tie. "Hm. Maybe I should have gone with something less tasteful than Armani. It looks a little obvious, doesn't it? No wonder he'd be embarrassed by us."

Justin smirks and responds with the same sarcasm, "Oh yeah, you look so nelly we could grill burgers over your flame. We should have had a cookout instead."

Of course, he doesn't sound like he thinks it's funny at all. Brian moves him arm down from the couch so it's resting more over his shoulders, and it seems for a second that Justin is moving in closer to him.

"Mommy," Gus moans, leaning forward in Brian's lap and looking at Melanie. "I'm hungry."

"Okay, we'll get you something to eat," she says.

"I'll go with him," Brian says. He turns to Justin and asks, "You want a drink or something?"

"Sure."

Brian takes Gus into the family room where there is a table with food and punch and they are just getting done filling a paper plate with pieces of cheese and carrots when Brian sees Craig is standing just a few feet away glancing over at them.

"Hey, Gus," he says, patting his head to get his attention. He picks up a cup of punch for him and hands it to him with his plate. "Go ahead and go back to your mommies, alright?"

"Okay," he says, turning away.

Brian looks up at Craig, who is now doing his best to pretend he hasn't even noticed them. He walks over to him and says, "Did you not know I have children, too, Mr. Taylor? Six of them."

He doesn't even turn to meet eyes with him.

"No, I'm shitting you, it's just the one," Brian says.

"What the hell do you want?" Craig asks in a low voice, finally looking his way.

"Just to say...well, I hope I wasn't out of line the other day. I just don't want my presence to cause any trouble. Surely you can understand."

"Understand? Oh, sure," Craig says darkly. "It's not enough that I've lost my only child I could be proud of. My son's shameful lifestyle has to be waved right in my face at her funeral, when if it wasn't for the bad influence you had on Justin this family might still be together. Then I would have had more time with my daughter than I had."

Brian stares at him for a long moment, taking in what he just said. "What are you saying?" he asks quietly. "You wish it had been him?"

Craig takes a little too long to answer, and his face shows a strange kind of alarm for a moment, as if he's just been scared by himself. "I did _not_ say that," he says in the same quiet voice. "Son of a bitch."

He looks away, and Brian scratches the back of his head for a moment as he looks around the room as if searching for someone else to go talk to. Then Brian says conversationally, "Mr. Taylor, were you aware that your son is about to have some of his paintings in a show at a very prestigious art gallery?"

Craig looks completely confused by him asking a question like that. "...No. No, I didn't know that," he says awkwardly.

"Hm. And did you know that he's living in New York completely independently of any financial help from anybody else? I'm sure you know the rent there even for a little shithole like the one he's living in is God-awful. But he pays for it all on his own. He has to get up as early as five in the morning sometimes to walk six blocks to the cafe where he works. But he can't work so much that he doesn't have time to do his art, of course. And do you have any idea how expensive it is to paint? You know how much just _one_ canvas can cost?"

"I wouldn't know," he says dully.

"And even with all that to worry about, he still manages to send me a small check every month to pay me back a little at a time for bankrolling the two years of education he got at the institute," Brian continues, restraining himself from adding a comment about why he needed to pay for his tuition in the first place.

Craig sighs, obviously running out of patience. "Why are you telling me all this?"

"I thought you'd be interested," he says, feigning surprise. "You're his father."

Craig just gives him a look of extreme vexation. "As far as I'm concerned, he's already completely thrown his life away."

"I see," Brian says, nodding. "Well, I just think it's too bad you're not proud of your son. Because I would be. I _am_."

Craig just stands there dumbfounded as Brian turns to walk off, and then he stops. "Oh. Forgot the drink," he says to Craig with a smile, going back to the table and taking a cup before walking off.

Right before he makes it to the landing area to go back into the living room he passes Justin's aunt he met earlier, and as he's momentarily stopped by a couple people blocking his way they smile at each other just because it seems like the thing to do when their eyes meet. Somehow this leads to her saying, "So, Ryan...It is Ryan?"

"Uh. Brian," he corrects.

"Sorry. Brian. So, what do you do?" she asks.

"I'm an ad executive. A year and a half ago I started my own agency."

"Ah. Well, that must be nice. Being your own boss."

"Yes. It's very nice," he says with a smile.

"Is it doing well?"

"Very well."

"That's good." She seems to be thinking of something else to say, and Brian thinks this is his chance to walk away before she goes on. "So, did you do any ads I might have seen?"

Brian thinks through all of Kinnetik's accounts until one company they've worked with comes to mind that didn't have hot, half-naked bodies on the ads. "Maybe. We did some spots for Froota bubblegum."

"Oh, the ones where the people are blowing bubbles and they say things on them like they're speech balloons?"

"That's right," he says with a smile, starting to feel a little bit like he's talking to a client he needs to impress.

"Oh, those are cute," she says. "Goodness...Those air a lot. You _must_ be doing well."

He grins. "Indeed."

She looks at him curiously for a moment and says, "So...are you just a friend of the family?"

Brian thinks to himself that he should have seen that one coming next. After all, how exactly would a man in his mid-thirties who's in advertising know Justin?

"Um," he says, almost laughing. "You could say that. Yes."

Suddenly someone grabs his shoulders and starts pushing him out of the room. Craig says, "Excuse us" to a confused-looking Aunt Ellen, who Brian suddenly has a strong impression must be from Craig's side of the family. He drags Brian into the hallway and looks around to make sure nobody is looking their way before he starts talking.

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize you wanted to chat more," Brian says.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he demands. "What are you talking to my sister-in-law about?"

Brian's tolerance is starting to run out now and he is afraid of saying something he shouldn't, so he just gives Craig an exasperated look and turns to walk away. Craig grabs his arm and vigorously pulls him back.

"Look, if you have to be here with Justin then be here," he says in an almost whispering but still heatedly angry voice. "But you stay the _fuck_ away from the rest of my family. They don't need to know about you."

Feeling a flash of anger, Brian doesn't even think before he smiles facetiously and blurts out, "Oh, but I was just going to tell Ellen over there how many times her nephew has sucked my dick."

Everybody in the surrounding rooms must hear it when Craig shoves him back against the wall, hands grabbing the front of his shirt. Knocked out of breath, Brian hears a lot of gasps and looks around to see several people looking their way and appearing at each ends of the hall to see what's going on. Including...

"_Dad!_ Jesus Christ!" Justin yells, coming into the hall.

Craig has gone in a second from looking angry to looking a combination of that and extremely embarassed, and he isn't holding Brian against the wall with much force anymore. Brian pushes him off of him and goes over to Justin, wrapping his arm around his chest to pull him away. "Come on."

"What the fuck did he do?" Justin says.

"Never mind. Come on."

Justin turns around and Brian practically tears a way through the crowd for them to go back into the landing area, where Lindsay and Ted are standing looking confused.

"What happened?" Lindsay asks.

Brian just shakes his head and hands her the now-empty plastic cup, looking down at his suit where the punch got spilled all over him when Craig pushed him. "Be a dear and throw that away for me."

"My God. Here," says Melanie, who just appeared out of the living room, getting a pack of tissues out of her pocket. Lindsay takes a couple and starts blotting the punch out of his shirt and suit.

Debbie comes over with her hands on her hips, followed by Carl, and says, "What in the flying fuck is going on?" in just barely a quiet enough voice for nobody in a next room to hear her.

Ted looks at her shrugging and Brian glances to the right to see Justin going up the stairs quickly, and he moves to go after him right away, leaving Lindsay dabbing the tissues at thin air for a second.

When he gets up to the second floor he sees Justin in the hall leaning into the wall with his head against it as if he feels sick, and comes up behind him and puts his hands on his shoulders.

"I can't fucking believe..." Justin pounds a fist against the wall, making a surprisingly loud thud.

"Hey. Come on," Brian says, wrapping his arms around him to pull him away from the wall and then leading him into his room. He takes him to the bed and pushes him down to sit on it, and then sits next to him.

Justin is breathing heavily, still looking angry, but starting to calm now. Brian puts his arm around him and says, "Fuck...I'm sorry."

Justin shakes his head. "God. You weren't even _doing_ anything."

Brian cocks an eyebrow. "How do you know?"

He shrugs. "Were you?"

Brian doesn't feel like telling him everything right now so after a moment's hesitation he says, "Just exchanging some boring small talk with your aunt. I should have known he wouldn't like that."

Justin looks in complete disbelief and rests his forehead down in his hands.

Brian runs his hand up and down his back and then, remembering how hard he just punched the wall, says, "Well. You sure can pack a wallop for a fag."

Justin looks up at him with a "what the fuck?" expression.

"Never mind," Brian says. "That's something my dad told me once after I got pissed at him and punched a box of books."

"Oh."

Brian realizes he's getting punch on Justin's shirt leaning into him and pulls back, taking off his suit. "Shit...Look at this."

Justin says, "Now you must really regret wearing Armani."

He laughs lightly and says, "No kidding."

Justin loosens his tie, undoes a button of his shirt, and leans back to lie across the bed. "You never told me you came out to your father."

Brian can hardly believe he's interested in that right now, but he says, "I didn't?"

"No."

Brian lies back on the bed next to him and Justin turns over on his side so they're looking at each other.

"I told him after I found out he had cancer," Brian says.

"What did he say?"

"He said I was the one who should be dying instead of him."

Even though he says it indifferently, it makes Justin go quiet and look at him a little sadly. Then he says, "Well, I guess it's a good thing we've both got our other family."

Brian smiles faintly and puts his hand to his face for a moment, brushing hair out of his eyes. "You want to go back downstairs?"

He sighs. "Not particularly. But I guess I should."

"You don't have to."

Justin smiles. "To tell you the truth, I can't wait until all these people just get out of here."

Brian almost grins, remembering how much Justin always hates parties or any kind of gatherings with lots of people unless they have many hot guys to look at. He rolls onto his back, looking up at the ceiling, and says, "Yeah, I don't really blame you."

They stay upstairs until it sounds like most of the guests have left. By the time they come down and Brian is ready to leave, everyone seems to have decided to pretend nothing out of the ordinary has happened during the whole reception so as not to let it be any more of a disturbance than it's already been. This doesn't last past the time Brian and the party he came with get into his car, at which point Michael immediately starts asking him what exactly happened with him and Craig and Brian just tells him, "Nothing. It was bullshit," and leaves it at that. 

* * *

By 4:30 Brian is starting to wonder what he took the whole day off for anyway, sitting in front of the TV with a beer and starting to think about going over to the store and bothering Michael until he closes so they can go straight to the diner. But then he hears someone knock on the door.

He turns around on the sofa to look at the door and calls, "It's open!"

As he expected, since he can't think of anyone else it would be, Justin opens the door and comes in. "Hi...Are you busy?"

Brian gestures toward the television. "Do I look busy?"

He shrugs, coming over behind the couch and looking at the TV screen. "What are you watching?"

"_Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,_" Brian answers. "Nothing else on."

"Oh. I've heard this kind of sucks," Justin says as he comes around the couch to sit next to him.

Brian looks surprised. "Who told you that?"

"Steph. Luke's boyfriend. He's into theater. According to him some of the best stuff in the play isn't even in the movie."

Brian takes a moment to process all that and then says, "His name is _Steph?_"

"Yeah, it's for Stephan. I know, isn't that silly? I can hardly call him that with a straight face."

He laughs into his bottle of beer as he takes a drink.

"He's kind of a strange guy," Justin says. "But a really good actor. I went with Luke to see a production of _Angels In America_ he was in. You ever seen that?"

"No."

"It's pretty amazing. Steph played this character who finds out his lover he's lived with for three years has AIDS, so he leaves him. But it's not that he doesn't love him, he does. I guess it's_ because_ of that. He loves him so much he just can't stand to watch him die."

For a second Brian feels like someone just punched him right in a very vulnerable spot in his stomach. "Shit...Life really isn't for sissies, is it?"

Justin looks down, frowning. Brian clears his throat and says, "So...he and Luke been together long?"

Justin has no idea why Brian would care to know anything about that, but he answers, "Two happy years of infidelity." He smiles a little thinking about it. "I don't see both of them that much, but when I do it's kind of sickening how much in love they obviously are. Finishing each other's sentences and stuff like that. The kind of thing you couldn't watch while you're eating."

Brian laughs again, elbowing him in the side.

"And what's kind of funny is they were both born to a couple hippies and they're really tight with each other's parents. They don't even live together but it's like they're practically married."

"So how do they do it?"

Justin shrugs. "They trust each other enough that they can be together but still be free."

Brian looks to the side at his face for a moment. It's the closest thing to an admission of what kind of a relationship he and Luke have had that he's ever said. But Brian finds he doesn't really care about that anymore.

"Well, that's what they say, isn't it?" Brian says. "If you love something you got to let it go."

Justin smiles. "Weren't you paying attention to the end of the movie last night? Keep thinking too much like that and you'll just be putting _yourself_ in a cage like Holly. Some people _want_ to belong to someone."

"I thought you were asleep."

"I've seen it lots of times. It's one of my mom's favorites. She always cries at the end. Don't tell her I told you that."

He smiles. "Wow. And here I thought you'd never seen any films made before 1980." He finishes off his beer and seems to realize something looking at the empty bottle. "Oh. Sorry. You want a drink?"

They both go to the fridge to get beers and sit at the bar drinking them. Brian says, "So, I assume word got around to your mother about what happened at the reception."

"I think word got around to everybody," Justin says, his face going hard again like it was right after it happened. "They just had the decency not to talk about it too openly."

"Well, remind me to apologize to her about that next time I'm at the house."

"Apologize? Why? It wasn't your fault."

"Actually...it kind of was."

Justin rolls his eyes. "Right, because you're not allowed to talk to any straight people at my family gatherings."

"No. Because I went up and talked to him first to try to...fuck it, it doesn't matter. It was a total waste of time. Anyway, he'd been pissing me off, so when he got on me later I had to say some joke I knew perfectly well would rub him the wrong way when I shouldn't have been fucking with him."

Justin thinks for a moment but then just says, "Whatever. He's the one who overreacted. And he feels really stupid about it, too."

Brian taps his knuckles on the counter uncomfortably. "I just feel..."

"What?"

He shrugs. "I don't know. Something this bad happening...Maybe at the least, it could have been a chance for you and your father to...reconnect or something."

Justin takes a long while to respond to that, seeming very taken aback that he would say that. Finally he says, "Well, if that's what it was, then he's the one who fucked it up, not you. Besides...I don't think I would ever want anything to do with him again no matter what."

This makes Brian feel a little better, but not much. The only reason he tried to apologize to Craig was because he'd become concerned that his confrontation with him might have affected the chances of him and Justin being able to get along again at all. Now it seems a lot more clear that that was never a possibility. But even so, although Justin pretends not to care anymore what his father thinks of him, he knows all too well that acceptance is something nobody can make themself not want. Especially from fathers.

"What was he saying that pissed you off so much, anyway?" Justin says in a careless, merely curious voice.

Brian looks up, caught by surprise. Then he looks away from Justin's eyes, focusing on the top of the counter. "...Nothing."

Justin looks at him like he sees exactly what he's hiding. "That's okay. I don't care."

He takes a drink of his beer and they both sit in silence for a while. For a while Brian stares carelessly over at Elizabeth Taylor on the muted TV and Justin stares off at nothing in particular.

The muted television brings a memory into Brian's head, for once one that doesn't have tears or blood. There was one day during the second time he and Justin were living together that they both had absolutely nothing to do, so they slept in until noon and then stayed inside for the entire day until the sun went down. They just hung around the loft in their underwear making fun of stupid shows on TV they would usually not be caught dead watching, but it was just a kind of day when they didn't care about anything and nothing bothered them. One hour they would be entangled together on the couch fucking slowly like they had all the time in world, drawing it out for long, agonizing minutes until the noises escaping from their throats made it sound like they were being tortured, and the next hour they would be lying on the floor high and laughing hysterically at something that wouldn't even seem that funny five minutes later. At one point Justin made a bowl of popcorn and they started trying to throw pieces of popcorn at each other and catch them in their mouths, and Brian didn't care at all that they were making a mess.

_"Man, you really suck at this."_

"I do not!"

"Look how much popcorn there is on the floor on your side!"

"Oh, fuck you. It's your aim that sucks. I'd think you would know where my mouth is after all the times your dick has been in it."

When Brian remembers this, for a moment he thinks he has an idea what is near the complete opposite side from the extreme pain of loss on that spectrum Lindsay was talking about.

Suddenly Justin says, "You know...I'm not even sure how she broke her wrist."

Brian looks at him, taking a second to re-emerge from his thoughts and realize what he's talking about.

"That happened this year, I guess," Justin says. "But the whole time I've been in New York I only saw Molly that one time I was here to visit. And I spent most of those two days out with you and the guys. And I think I only talked to her once on the phone when I called. That was it. I don't remember if I heard about her breaking her wrist. I don't know how that happened. I felt too bad to ask my mom..."

Brian isn't sure what to say. He just puts his hand over his wrist where it's resting on the counter. Justin doesn't even seem to feel the touch, like he's off in another world.

"I don't think she ever really understood why I had to leave home when I was seventeen," he continues. "I mean...we fought a lot, but she did kind of look up to me. And my mom always said she was asking about me all the time. She didn't know how to tell her it wasn't that I _wanted_ to leave."

"I'm sure she understood," Brian says. "You went to her birthday party, didn't you? You didn't just vanish off the face of the earth without looking back."

He looks up at him. "I'm surprised you remember that."

"I believe it was the reason I got robbed that one time."

"You didn't seem to think it was a good enough reason."

"Well...what the hell. Whatever I didn't get ripped off I would have had to part with after I went insane and paid for those TV spots, anyway."

Justin crosses his arms on the counter and says, "Now that I think about it, she might have thought what my dad did at the reception was kind of funny. That he embarrassed himself like that." He thinks a moment and then a strange-sounding laugh suddenly comes out of him. "She didn't really like him, you know. Maybe she wasn't old enough to know the real reasons not to. But he was always such a hard-ass. Mom was much more lenient about letting her do stuff like have spontaneous, unplanned sleepovers. I remember we always loved to tell on each other to my mom when we caught each other doing something bad, but for some reason we never did that to Dad. I guess it was kind of fun keeping something from _him_ he should know."

Justin takes another drink and then wrings his hands together a little, looking oddly uncomfortable in his own skin. "The poor bastard, though," he says, and the words sound like they're fighting their way out. "I guess Molly was the last remaining link keeping what _was_ our family still connected at all. I only ever heard anything about him from what Molly found out when she saw him. And now...he's got nothing. He's lost _both_ of his kids."

In the next few seconds, Brian can hear his breathing become more disturbed, and then he stands up muttering, "Shit," and puts his hand over his mouth.

Brian stands and goes over to him and tries to turn him around, but he doesn't want to face him.

"Justin. Hey..." He wraps one arm around his chest as his first sob comes out and he covers his face with both of his hands. Brian isn't really aware of what he says to him when he says it; maybe he just says, "It's okay," but whatever it is allows Justin to completely let go, and all at once his legs seem to completely lose their strength as he collapses back against him and Brian is practically holding him up from behind. They sink to the floor together, Brian holding him so tightly around his chest it is like he's trying to hold all his pieces together as his back shakes. And there they are curled together again, maybe not healing yet this time, but feeling what has to be felt and not carrying it around alone anymore.


	8. Part VII

On Sunday, Michael comes along with Brian to see Lindsay and Melanie off at the airport. As they walk up near their gate and stop, Brian notices Gus frowning and looking downward as he stands silently at Lindsay's side.

"What's with all the pouting, little guy?" he asks.

"He doesn't want to leave," Lindsay says with a smile.

"Doesn't want to leave _Pittsburgh_?" he asks in an exaggeratedly shocked voice, looking down at him, and Michael laughs. He pats him on the head and says, "Don't be sad. We'll all see each other again before you know it."

He looks back up at Lindsay, who lets go of Gus's hand and steps forward to hug him. "You better mean that," she says in a threatening voice into his ear.

Brian smiles, letting go of her and stepping back to look at her face.

"I'm serious," she says. "Are you going to call me?"

He nods.

She smiles up at him. "I feel like I have to ask you the same question I did last time I left."

He smirks. "I'm fine. It's not my sister who died. Hell, what am I saying? If Claire kicked the bucket I think I'd be_ more _than fine."

She hits him on the chest. "Don't say that! Hey. You listen. I'm counting on you to do what you should do so that I don't have to worry too much about Justin being alright...And so I don't have to worry about you, either."

"Believe me, I have no intention of making things harder than they already are for him right now."

"Right now," she echoes for emphasis. "What about later?"

"We've been friends since we were nineteen. You should know by now that having any kind of relationship with Brian Kinney is never always going to be a walk in the park."

She crosses her arms and stares at him with a hard, unchanging face, which prompts him to continue, "But...Justin has been the exception to so many Brian Kinney rules that, well...who the fuck knows what's ever going to happen?"

Her expression softens and then she puts a hand up to his face. "You love each other. If you want it to work...it can. I'm sure."

He smiles and leans down to kiss her. Michael is finishing saying goodbye to JR and handing her back to Melanie. Brian turns to her and just says acknowledgingly, "Mel."

Melanie smiles and reaches her hand out to shake his, but when he clasps it they just hold each other's hands tightly for a brief second rather than actually moving them in a handshake, and she says, "Bye, Brian. Good to see you."

Lindsay puts her hand on Gus's back and says, "Okay, honey, you give your daddy a hug goodbye."

Brian kneels on the floor in front of Gus and wraps him up in a big hug. "See you, son," he says. Then, in a voice too quiet for any of the others to hear, he says, "I love you."

On the drive back, Brian is very quiet, responding to anything Michael says only with short, inattentive answers. Michael keeps looking to the side at him as if trying to find something in his face.

"You okay?" he finally asks.

Brian looks over at him, seeming surprised. "Yeah. Of course I'm okay."

Michael smiles and looks back forward. "It wouldn't be hard to go up and see them. And I'm sure they'll be back a lot more. Probably for Christmas soon. It's not just going to be every six months, you know."

Brian looks back at him with heavy eyelids, looking mildly irritated, like Michael is only prodding at a sore spot. "Yes. I know."

Michael turns his gaze to the window, giving up. 

* * *

The next day Brian stops by Jennifer's house early in the afternoon, and she is the one who answers the door this time. She tells him Justin is out with Daphne but invites him inside for a cup of coffee. As Brian walks in, he notices the house still smells like flowers everywhere, but a lot of the vases now have crumbled, dead petals that have started to fall scattered around them on the tables they are placed on. The silence inside this house has started to feel more like a peaceful quiet than the morose and disturbing one that it has been.

One of the first things Brian says once they are sitting at the kitchen table is, "By the way, I'm sorry about what happened at the reception."

Stirring her cream into her cup of coffee, Jennifer just shakes her head. "Don't be silly. I'm tired of hearing about it over and over again. Especially when it could have been a lot worse. You could have gotten into a full-fledged fistfight during the eulogy instead of here, where hardly anybody even saw anything happen."

Brian laughs softly. "Yeah, but...even if it wasn't that much of an embarrassment..."

"It was her day," she finishes for him quietly. "And it was inappropriate. I know. Yet after it happened, as Craig was trying to explain and excuse himself, he hardly seemed to realize that _that_ was the reason to be ashamed...And besides, with some of the things he has been saying to me, especially about you being around and my apparent approval of it...I don't think I blame you or care even if you did something to provoke him." She takes a drink of her coffee and then adds, "And I guess in a way, I'm just tired of hearing the words 'I'm sorry.'"

Brian nods. "That's understandable."

He looks around the kitchen and just now notices a lot of boxes sitting on the counter. He remembers how soon after his father died that his mother started getting rid of his things, and wonders what is in them. But Jennifer, seeing what he's looking at, counters his assumptions about what they must be there for by saying, "Oh, I guess no one might have told you. Tucker is moving in with me."

"Oh," he says, taken aback. And fully aware as it comes out of his mouth that he has never said anything like this in response to the news of a couple moving in together, but even more surprised by the fact that he means it, he says, "That's great."

She nods. "Yeah, it's something we were talking about even before...you know, before it happened. And now it seems as good a time as ever."

"That probably makes Justin feel a little better about leaving again. He's been worrying about you."

"And I guess it's a good thing he warmed up to him, huh?"

"Well, he more than owed it to you for warming up to me."

She smiles. "It wasn't as hard as you might think...Actually, I'm a little worried about him, too. Any time I bring up anything about him going back to New York he doesn't exactly indulge the subject. He's comfortable being back here now, and I'm sure it's a little scary to think about going back out there."

Brian is quiet for a moment, tapping fingers against his mug. "But he has to go back sometime."

"Of course," she agrees. "That's where his dreams are. You know...I never really thanked you."

"For what?"

"For the fact that he's there."

He shrugs. "That's not because of me."

"Sure it is, in a way. You let him go free even though you wanted to keep him."

Brian wonders if she realizes that she once showed him a good example of how that's done. _"I need you to take him."_

"I was overwhelmed with happiness when I found out you were going to get married, believe it or not," she says. "But then after you called it off, Justin showed me that article that was written about him after he had his first opening, and...I can't say it made me even_ more _happy, because it was a very different kind of pride and happiness for him. But I knew he was making the right choice. And...I also felt a little sad for you."

He looks at her with a small smile.

"I know he wouldn't be the person he is today if it wasn't for you," Jennifer says.

"And I wouldn't be the person I am if it wasn't for him," he says. "But whether or not he's actually done a good job on me only time will tell."

She laughs shortly. Then, as a new thought seems to come into her head, she says, "You know...as much as you might think I must have been thrilled to be getting free of that man four years ago, the truth is I was terrified of getting divorced. Of being alone. But as it turns out, I had nothing to be afraid of. Even after I've lost one of my children, I don't feel like I'm alone at all. I never could have known how much this other family Justin went off and made himself part of would become like my family, too. It didn't really hit me until I saw all of you here at the reception." She looks up from her coffee at Brian. "Even though things didn't work out the way you meant for them to with you and Justin, I guess I can't help but still think of you as a son-in-law."

Brian looks at her a while before responding. "Well...I would say the same except, as a rule, I guess nobody's supposed to_ like _their in-laws." He smiles. "But I suppose for us, there can be an exception."

She smiles back warmly, and then lifts her mug to her mouth to finish off her coffee.

Before he leaves, Jennifer walks him to the door and says, "Well, I guess there's never any telling when I might see you again. So...you take of yourself."

He nods and says, "You, too."

Then in all of a short second, as quickly as someone dips their toe into a pool to see if the water is warm, he puts his hand to her arm, leaning over, and they peck each other's cheeks.

When he gets into his car, Brian calls Justin's cellphone and gets his recorded voice saying, "Leave a message." He says, "Hey, it's me. Uh...I know you're with Daphne right now, but call me tonight if you're available, or some time tomorrow. I know you're probably going back to New York soon, so...Well, anyway, I want to see you. Later." 

* * *

On Wednesday night, Michael and Brian are sitting at a booth at the diner as Michael is in an extensive conversation with Hunter on his phone.

"...Well, can't you do your work at school and just use one of theirs?" he says. "...Oh, for Christ sake."

Brian has been boredly looking around the diner for the whole five minutes Michael has been on the phone, and he now takes out his own phone and flips it open to look at the screen.

"...Okay," Michael says. "I guess I'll come meet you in about twenty minutes. Hopefully we can make it before the store closes. Bye." He sighs, finally hanging up. "So much for us hanging out."

"Got to babysit?" Brian says teasingly.

"I've got to go with Hunter to buy some ridiculously fancy kind of calculator he's supposed to have for school and will probably only have to use for half the semester."

Brian laughs. "Oh, the joys of parenthood."

"So much for buying that new TV Ben and I wanted, too," he adds with a laugh. He stares at Brian, who is still looking at something on his phone. "What do you keep checking that for?"

Brian looks up. "Nothing," he says, flipping his phone shut.

As if Michael knows what it's all about without him even telling him, he then asks, "When's Justin going to be going back?"

The expression on Brian's face seems to stay the same only with a lot of effort. "Don't know."

Brian doesn't know when Justin might be going back to New York because he still has not heard back from him after two days of trying to get a hold of him. He has just been burying himself into whipping everything back into shape at Kinnetik that has suffered from things having to be run without him a lot lately, and spending the nights at Babylon with the guys. Everything is starting to feel a little like normal again, and for some reason that sort of disturbs him.

He doesn't know what to make of it. Maybe Justin just isn't checking his phone very regularly. He keeps thinking to himself that it can't be anything more than that. Yet he doesn't feel quite right about just going over to try to see him or calling him again.

Maybe it is because of what he said on his message he left. "I know you're probably going back to New York soon." _The next time we see each other it could be goodbye._ It could be there's something he needs to tell him. But Brian doesn't like thinking that. He must not have looked at his phone.

Michael stands up and says, "Well, I got to go. See you," and kisses Brian on the head before walking out.

Later as Brian is leaving the diner and turning around the corner outside, he brushes shoulders with someone with a very familiar-looking blond head and turns to look back at him. Justin stops and turns around as well, looking very alarmed, like he has just been caught doing something wrong.

"Hey," he says, his eyes staying on his face only for a second.

Brian gestures toward the diner. "Going in?"

Justin awkwardly looks behind him at the windows of the restaurant for a second as if he doesn't already know what's there. "Yeah."

Brian goes back inside with him and Debbie immediately comes to their booth once she sees them sit down.

"Hi, Sunshine," she says in her sweetest voice. "What can I get you?"

"I'll just have some fries and a coke," he says.

"Oh, the hell you will." She grabs his wrist, feeling the bones sticking out just to emphasize her point. "Christ, haven't you been eating anything in New York?"

"Instant noodles can be surprisingly filling," he answers, pulling his arm out of her grasp.

"Fuck that. Whenever you leave I'm going to have to make you something to take back with you."

Brian doesn't miss him instantly frowning at that, but he recovers from it quickly enough to respond, "Really, Deb, that won't be necessary. By the way, my mom wanted me to tell you she's sorry she hasn't brought you all your dishes back yet. She keeps meaning to."

"Oh, don't worry about it. I'll swing by and get them sometime. So...That'll be a _very large_ order of fries," she says, writing the order down. "It's on the house anyway."

Justin sighs, smiling. "Fine, if you insist."

"Brian, you want another coffee or something?" she asks him, and he nods.

When she walks away, Justin says, "I thought I'd probably run into you at this time here, but I guess I just caught you."

"I'd say your timing was perfect, as you_ literally_ ran into me," Brian says.

He laughs. "Yeah...Where were you headed?"

"Home for the time being. I was supposed to go out with Mikey but he ditched me to go shopping with Hunter."

After Debbie comes over with Justin's drink and fills Brian's coffee cup, they sit in a relaxed silence for a moment. Then Brian says, "How are you doing?"

Stirring the ice around in his glass with his straw, Justin shrugs. "Okay. I guess."

With that out of the way, Brian hesitates to say it but has to. "I've been calling you."

Justin's stirring of his soda slows and then stops.

"I left you a message," Brian says.

For a few seconds Justin won't meet eyes with him. Then he looks up at him, opening his mouth as if to offer an explanation, but it seems for a moment like nothing can come out. Then instead of explaining, he just says in a small voice, "I'm sorry."

Somehow it is the last thing Brian was expecting to hear, and he suddenly wishes he just hadn't said anything.

"That's okay," he says. He takes a sip of coffee and then fills the uncomfortable silence by saying, "So, your mom and her beau are shacking up."

"Yeah. Not as absolutely horrifying as it would have seemed to me a while ago. Probably is to you, though."

"Naw, what do I care? They're straight people, it's what they do. In fact...I think it's kind of nice."

"'Nice'?" Justin repeats, because he's not sure if he's ever even heard Brian use that word before. "You just think so because at least this way she won't be living alone."

Brian thinks about that a moment, and shrugs. "Yeah, that seems about right."

Justin smiles for a second. After a moment of contemplation he agrees, "Yeah, it is nice."

After they leave the diner, Justin goes back to the loft with him. Seeing some work Brian has left out on the table for a cosmetics company campaign, he says approvingly, "Nice to see you haven't lost your touch," and then Brian shows him some of the other work Kinnetik is doing right now on his computer. One of Brian's high school yearbooks is lying open on the desk because a few nights ago he thought to get it out and find Tony Ficeli's picture while he was smoking a joint by himself and wheeling idly around the loft in his swivel chair. Justin sees it and picks it up, saying, "Ooh, we have to look at your dorky club pictures."

"Give me that," Brian says, trying to snatch it out of his hand but missing.

"Hey," he says when he opens up the front cover. "You don't have any signatures in here. I thought you'd at least have more than Michael. I remember seeing only about five in his."

"That's because I didn't _want_ to remember any of those assholes."

"Yet you've still got this."

"Yeah, well, it's good for a few laughs, as you unfortunately have discovered."

After Justin looks through the book a while, commenting on all the ridiculous 80's hairstyles, Brian leaves him at the desk and says, "I'm gonna hop in the shower a few minutes," and Justin nods. When he comes back out of the bathroom ten minutes later changed into a beater and jeans, he finds Justin sitting at the other desk on the opposite side of the room where his own computer he used to use to draw on is, looking at something on the screen.

As Brian goes to the fridge for a beer, Justin says, "I can't believe how much shit I did I still have saved on here. There's even some stuff for _Rage_. Come look at this."

He walks over behind Justin's chair and looks at the screen to see a sketch of an extremely muscular woman sitting on a motorcycle and wearing a helmet with enormous, sharp spikes. "What the fuck is that?"

"Some hero Michael and I came up with when we were just messing around one day. Our super lesbian. I forget what her name was going to be."

"Spike Dyke," Brian suggests.

Justin laughs. "That's good."

"No, it's not."

"...Yeah, you're right, it's not," he says, making Brian snicker. "And this character is shit. Good thing we didn't try to use her."

Brian crosses his arms, looking at it. "Well, even your shit is pretty high quality shit. Especially considering you probably have a lot less practice drawing female anatomy than male."

He grins at him and says sarcastically, "Where would you get that idea?" Looking back at the computer, he says, "I've kind of missed being able to draw on this thing."

"Take it back with you," Brian says. "All it does is sit here."

This is not exactly true, because although Brian has never found Spike Dyke before, on occasion he has gotten on that computer and looked through some of Justin's art that is still saved on it. It has often bothered him to see it sitting there not even touched because Justin isn't here. But he does not tell him this.

Justin looks at the computer in thought for a while. "I guess I could," he says, but doesn't sound very enthusiastic. Brian stares at him a moment but doesn't say anything more about it.

They sit at the counter for a while drinking beers, both barefoot and relaxed and past the awkwardness that was there when they first met earlier, at least for now. They look through the yearbook, Brian seeming to have some story to tell that goes along with every picture in it and Justin often having a similar high school experience to recount. By the time they get to the middle of the book they have switched to taking shots of Jack Daniel's, and every story they tell seems unusually entertaining.

"Look. Angela Cage," Brian says, pointing to a picture of a very pretty girl with wavy red hair. "I went with her to prom."

"_You_ went to your prom?" Justin asks in disbelief.

"Only in junior year. I wasn't really explicitly out yet. Angela was supposed to go with Mark Simmons, this dick who I gave a black eye once after he tripped Mikey in the locker room. So when he got caught sneaking some drinks during lunch and was banned from all extra-curricular activities and events, she dumped his ass and was so desperate for a date she decided to be the aggressor and asked _me_. So I thought what the hell, and asked if she'd be able to get a friend to go with Mikey. 'Cause Debbie was pressuring him to go and he wouldn't stop moaning about how he kind of wanted to go but didn't know what we should do."

"He probably just wanted you to ask him," Justin says.

Brian laughs. "Of course he did...Well, Angela _did_ get a date for him. But after a couple hours, playing the straight people's game was getting boring and they weren't having fun, either. So we snuck out while they were in the ladies' room together and went out to Babylon instead."

"No way."

"Yeah, our first night we went. Babylon virgins, can you imagine?"

"Oh, I think I can," Justin says. Then a dead silence comes over him for a moment, and he says, "Sounds almost as memorable as my prom night...How fucking ironic is that."

Brian just looks at him for a while, and then Justin pours another shot which officially makes the number he's had a lot in a short while, and after he downs it and slams the glass back on the counter, Brian's hand comes down covering his and he says gently, "Hey. Take it easy." But Justin is wearing one of those frightening expressions some people get after a few drinks, like they suddenly care about nothing.

From then on, the high school memories they tell progress to less amusing, more serious ones: a girl named Anna who Justin used to play with in kindergarten who he later heard nearly died from an eating disorder at age seventeen, an English teacher practically everyone at Brian's school loved because he was so funny and easygoing who it turned out harassed two students. Once they have closed the yearbook and forgotten it, Brian feels like he has told Justin everything he remembers from that time so long ago, except for the story of Tony Ficeli.

By the time it is nearing midnight, any intention of not getting drunk has gone out the window, and they do not really notice it, but they have both started to speak at a lower volume. The night is fully formed; there are hardly any sounds of cars outside anymore like the sleeping city has finally passed from the REM stage into a deep, dark slumber; and Brian feels like the whole world is slowing down along with the thoughts in his head which are now diffused and watery instead of sharp. With every drink Justin has, he smiles or laughs at things less and less, or when he does laugh it sounds heavy and unnatural.

Finally their throats feel tired from all the loud talking and laughing from earlier, and they slip into a few minutes of silence. Brian goes over to the desk for a moment to take something out of the drawer and comes back to the counter, setting down a written check in front of Justin. "There, that's for you."

"What's this?" Justin doesn't even pick it up, like he doesn't want to know what it is.

"It's a check for five hundred dollars," he answers as if Justin can't figure out that much himself. "To help you out when you get back in New York. You've had to miss a lot of work."

"I don't need it," he says, shaking his head.

"Shut up and take it. You can just add it to the list of expenses you already owe me."

"No, I mean...I don't even know if I can just get right back into my life in New York right now."

"What are you talking about?" Brian says. "You have to be back in New York now. You have to finish getting ready for your show."

"The show. Yeah," he says carelessly.

Brian leans over on the counter with his arms crossed. "Didn't you say once that after something bad happens to you the best way to know you're still here is to create something?"

"Something like that," Justin says, sounding like it's strange for him to think he once said such a thing.

Brian stares forward, not breaking eye contact with him. "Well, you can't just stay here doing nothing. That's not going to make you feel any better. This is your time to be there. Just because you're really talented that doesn't mean you're going to get a dozen more chances at this kind of thing."

"I_ know_," Justin says, sounding frustrated, "but...Christ. I was so excited about this opening but now it's impossible to imagine actually enjoying it when the day comes. It's impossible to even imagine ever wanting to paint something again, or liking it so much there like I did again. I know that's only because all this just happened and I've got to wait and let time do its thing, but still...the thought of going back out there on my own right now is awful. I..." He stops a second, hesitating. "I've just gotten used to seeing everybody again. It's like I had no idea how much I really missed being here until I came back for so long. I've just been in New York neglecting to even stay in touch with everybody all that much. And now one of the people I should have come to see or at least talked to a lot more is dead."

Brian lets out a long breath, going around the counter to sit at the seat right next to him. "Look, it's not like you have to get right back into your routine," he says, putting a hand on his upper back. "You don't have to go back to work just yet if you don't want to deal with shit like that right now. Just get back there, go to your opening, take it easy for a while. Things will start to fall back into place."

"And then everything will go back to exactly how it was before?" Justin says, suddenly sounding strangely bitter. He turns toward him in his seat so that Brian's hand slides a little down his back and then nudges his arm away from him with his elbow. It's just a light touch, almost like a natural and unintentional movement, but it feels to Brian like a slap.

He tries to ignore that, saying, "Not to sound like the insensitive prick I am, but...yes. Everything _will_ go back to the way it was before, only Molly won't be there. With time, it won't be so impossible to imagine."

"I wasn't just talking about her," he says, fixing him with a meaningful look.

Brian looks at him not knowing what to say, because he doesn't know if he can go there yet. But Justin goes on anyway.

"I'm sorry," he says with a heavy sigh. "This is just too much to deal with all at the same time. Molly gone and...and_ you._..Coming back here and seeing everybody, and even Mel and Linz and the kids being here...It almost made it feel like things have gone back to how they were. Everybody one big happy family like in the old days. But things have changed and I guess I just need to accept that. This isn't really my home anymore, is it? And you and I aren't..."

Brian cannot let him finish that, and everything comes out of his mouth without passing through the usual filter. "Look, I'll...what do you need me to do? I can..."

"What do I need you to do?" Justin says, and he laughs like he just told him a bad joke. "I need you to tell me you're too much of a fucking coward to make this work and it's over. Because I can't just_ kind of _have you like this, it's worse than just being without you and knowing it."

Brian's stomach drops and he is suddenly speechless. Everything has moved completely past talking about Molly. It's_ them_ now.

"I mean...Jesus, why'd you come and get me at the airport?" Justin says. "It almost made me think..." He stops, shaking his head miserably, and puts his forehead into both of his hands. "God dammit. I shouldn't have had so much to drink."

"Justin," Brian says, grabbing his shoulders so his head rolls up to look at him. "I was_ going_ to say...I can come back with you to New York, or come stay there really soon after you go back, if that's what would make you feel better about it."

"No." Justin pushes his hands off of him again, which again feels so violating and wrong, and stands up.

"I'm trying to tell you I'll come and see you more," Brian says, his voice raising. "So we _can_ make it work."

"And I'm telling you I can't believe it. Look, the only reason you've been acting almost like we're together again is because my sister just died. Just like the only reason we first became something actually resembling a real couple is because Chris Hobbs almost killed me. And you didn't ask me to move in again until after you got cancer. And you finally told me you loved me only because you had been afraid I was dead hours before. A relationship built entirely out of tragedies, can you think of anything more pitiful?"

"Got to make it out of something," Brian says quietly.

Justin shakes his head. "There's one thing I've finally learned about you over all these years. You don't change. It's like you just _can't_. You say these things like 'We're going to go away together sometime, just the two of us, but I just can't go right now.' Or 'I think I want to spend more time with my son from now on.' But it never happens. And then before you know it, Gus is gone. He's living in another country, and even though you may get to visit each other every once in a while, you're not going to get to see him grow up...And now I'm gone, too."

Brian's face shows for a moment how much what he's hearing is like a punch in the stomach, and he is rendered completely silent.

"...And I know you can't help the way you are, that it's so hard for you to just open up to people," Justin goes on. "It's just the way you're made up. And I've been having to tell myself that over and over again the whole five years I've known you. But it gets tiresome that you have to treat the people you care about the most like shit, because when we've been together you've always assumed that some day, even if not then, or soon, I was going to walk out on you. Because why would anyone actually want to love you..._right?_" he says as if expecting an answer from Brian, who only closes his eyes for a second. "But even if I understand why, that doesn't make things any easier for me." He takes a moment to collect himself, looking away from him, as if the strength it's taking to say this is running out and he might start tearing up. But he takes in a deep breath and looks back up, straight into his face. "So if you can't tell me it's over, then...fine._ I'm_ telling you."

Brian's jaw seems to clench for a second and then he stands up in front of him, close enough that it's almost like he's trying to make him give up his ground and step back. "Well," he sighs, tossing his hands in the air a little. "I guess we're pretty good at this by now. This is just old habit for us, isn't it? It's _always _you telling me. And yet you think I'm irrational for always being afraid you'll walk out on me any day."

They keep looking at each other a little challengingly like this for a few more seconds. Then Justin shakes his head, and he sounds only sad instead of angry as he whispers, "Fuck you," and turns away to walk off.

All in a second, the scared part of Brian that is usually hiding dormant deep inside of him comes out of the dark into completely open vulnerability and starts panicking. Before he is even conscious of doing it, he grabs Justin's arm before he gets far away and pulls him back around to face him. "I love you."

"Stop it," Justin says angrily, struggling to pull himself free from his grasp.

"I'm sorry. I still love you."

"It doesn't make any difference!" Justin yells. "It's too late to say that even if it's true."

"I'm not just going to watch you walk out that door and not do anything this time," Brian says in a low voice, pulling him even closer so his face is close to his.

"You have before, you can again."

"Yeah, and you always came back!" he says, shaking him a little. "And you know why that is, too. Even if you get everything you think you want - some perfect husband and your warm and cozy home with a white picket fence - you are_ never _going to be completely happy out there. Because no matter where you go or who you're ever with, you're always going to belong to me."

"Shut up!" he shouts. "Let_ go_ of me."

But Brian is much physically stronger than him, and doesn't seem able to release him. They struggle against each other desperately, Brian grabbing onto his clothes and Justin pushing at his chest with all his strength, until he is begging more than telling him, "_Please_ let me _go_," because he can feel he doesn't have enough in him to resist for so long, not right now. Then finally he collapses into him like he did before, and when it happens it is like a dam breaking, all of the strength in both of them running out at the same time, and it's him who pulls Brian's head down to kiss him. Holding most of Justin's weight, Brian doesn't sink to the floor with him this time but picks him up and stumbles across the room with his legs wrapped around him and pushes him against the pillar, mouth at his neck and hands going under his clothes to find the safety of what he knows so well.

By the time Brian carries him to the bed and falls onto him, their voices and any sensible thoughts going through their heads have been replaced with a loud silence blocking out any words, and soon the only sound is the hot breath and there is only their mouths close together, open and gasping, wordlessly saying things their voices cannot say. And for them this speaks so much more articulately about something words cannot describe than speaking can anyway, and this is what they know and understand, each other's bodies so familiar, the home they now crawl back into to hide, the only way they can speak in a way that will make each other understand. For it's how they always understood from the beginning, even without ever talking about it.

Because a few years ago it was them in this same bed and it was still very new instead of so familiar, and Brian was still saying "I don't believe in that shit" but already he said different things here with him, his fingers creeping in between Justin's knuckles where his hand grasped the sheets and then slowly interlacing their fingers together as easily as water seeps into cracks, some tongueless voice deep inside his dark and hidden places that even he himself did not hear whispering_ I love you _as naturally and uncontrollably as came the next thrust, another breath. 

* * *

Brian wakes up in the morning with a faint headache and a bad feeling in his stomach as he opens his eyes and sees the spot next to him in the bed is empty. He at once remembers details of last night, just pieces of the whole picture rather than a full reckoning of what happened: Justin's dead-looking eyes while he was talking about the girl he knew named Anna, how light he felt when he was carrying him, and how after they came he stayed inside him for what seemed like a long time, as if they were both afraid to move, afraid of time moving forward and on, until finally they moved apart tiredly and ended up with their backs turned to each other.

He gets out of bed and on the way into the bathroom he can see that Justin is sitting in one of the chairs in front of the TV with only his pants on, just staring in the direction of the screen as if watching something on it even though the TV is off.

He goes to the sink and washes his face, noticing that it looks like Justin took a shower. What he does not know is that he has been up for quite a while, staring at Brian's back as he was sleeping, sitting on the edge of the bed smoking a cigarette and occasionally wiping at his eyes, and getting in the shower only to sit at the bottom with his legs curled up against himself and just let the water run on him for twenty minutes.

When he comes back out of the bathroom, Justin has put his shirt on and is sitting at the counter now, rubbing at a spot on his upper back near his right shoulder. Brian wonders if he could have bruised him there slamming him against the pillar so hard. He goes around the counter and sits down across from him. Justin doesn't even look up at him for a few seconds, like he is in a kind of daze.

"You okay?" Brian says.

Justin gives a small nod.

Brian goes to the fridge to get out some juice. "Well, that was kind of fucked up," he says, in a way that almost sounds humorous.

Justin looks at him forlornly as he gets a glass out of a cabinet. "Brian..."

He shakes his head, holding a hand up to stop him. "No. I don't need to hear it."

"You don't know what I was going to say."

"I don't want you to say anything. It doesn't matter, okay? You've got enough on your mind without feeling bad about a drunk fuck." He pours his glass of juice and puts it back away. "Are you hungry? You want anything?"

"No." Justin keeps watching him, and sighs. "I can't help it, I just feel shitty. It's like in a messed up way I used you to feel better."

"Obviously I didn't do anything to stop you. Listen, it's understandable, and I guess normal, for you to do things you wouldn't necessarily usually do when you're...going through something like this. So...let's just blame it on the shitty state of the world rather than either of ourselves."

"No excuses, no apologies, no regrets?" Justin says.

Brian shrugs. "If you will."

Justin crosses his arms, looking down at the counter. "I guess you're right," he says after a while. Then he seems to reluctantly admit everything, like he wishes it were not true. "Back when I got attacked, you know, everyone was trying to support me and help me deal with that in whatever way they could. But all along you were the person I needed the most. You were the only one who could even come close to making me feel better just by being there. I don't think I ever could have gotten through recovering from that without you...And the whole time I've been having to deal with Molly being gone, it's kind of been the same way." He looks up at him. "And you have been here, but it hasn't really been the same. I've had Brian my friend with me, but what I've really needed is Brian my...boyfriend, or whatever you want to call it. My.._.my Brian._"

Brian looks down so he's not meeting eyes with him anymore. "I said you don't have to explain."

But he goes on, "I guess I just felt such a great need to be close to you like that again, now that I'm having to get through this."

Brian shifts his weight from one foot to the other uncomfortably for a moment. Then it comes out very quickly, in one heavy breath. "I came to see you at the hospital."

Justin looks up like he isn't even sure what he just heard. "...What?"

He speaks so softly it's like he's talking to a priest in a confessional. "After you got hurt, you thought I never came to see you. But I did. I came to check up on how you were doing every night while you were asleep. And watched you through the door."

Justin does not even move for a moment, or visibly react at all, like he's having difficulty letting that sink in. "Why are you telling me this now?"

"...I don't know. I guess it's just the first time I've ever wanted to."

"Well, it doesn't change anything," Justin says, and even though it was four years ago, all of the hurt he didn't let show back then is suddenly revealing itself in his voice. "You should have come and _talked_ to me."

"I know."

"I wanted to see you. You could have at least showed up once to say you were sorry so I could tell you it _wasn't_ your fucking fault so you could stop beating yourself up over it, wearing that...that bloody thing around your neck like a scarlet letter and hating yourself."

"You make it sound almost like I was the one who needed help getting through it."

"Well, sometimes it kind of seemed that way."

Brian slips into deep thought for a long moment, going quiet. He walks around the counter and then goes over to walk up the steps to the bed, sitting down on the edge of it by the dresser. He opens up the bottom drawer and Justin watches him look around underneath the folded clothes in one corner until he finally starts to pull something out of its dark hiding place, something that once shined brilliant white all over but now has spots of reddish brown.

Justin walks over to the bed as well and stands in front of him where he's sitting as he wraps each end of the scarf around his hands, his eyes glazing over as if looking at something very far away as he touches it. He sits down next to him and says, "I still wish I could remember everything."

Brian looks to the side at him. "You've never remembered anything more?"

He shakes his head. "I don't know...I've heard all the details from other people so many times that sometimes it seems like I _do_ remember. It's like a story I can recite for memory. But...there aren't any feelings accompanied with thinking back on it, like _I_ wasn't really there."

"You said it was the best night of your life."

"...I did?" he says, looking surprised.

Brian nods. "That was the last thing you said before...Well, except 'Later,' as you were walking off, but that was the last thing you said."

"You never said anything about that before."

"Well. I guess there's a lot of things I never said to you," he says quietly.

Justin stares down at the scarf for a while, stands up and starts pulling it out of his hands. "You should have gotten rid of this a long time ago. Just let me throw it away."

Almost unconsciously, Brian's grip on the other end tightens before he can take it, and he looks up at him.

"What the hell are you so afraid of?" Justin demands. "Just get rid of this thing and forget about it."

"No," he says. "I have to keep this."

"Why?"

"I just have to," Brian says, not knowing how to explain. "It's...a reminder of something."

"I know. I want you to let it go," Justin says, trying to pull it away again, and they are in somewhat of a tug-of-war over it for a second before Justin just drops it and sighs.

"What if I told you to let go of what happened to your sister?" Brian asks him, making his face turn hard. He stands up and wraps the scarf around his neck. "What if it was me who got bashed in the head, and you sitting in that hospital with my blood all over you, and then having to wait three days to find out if I was going to live, and knowing if I didn't it was because of you?"

Justin pulls the scarf off him. "I'm not saying it's fucking easy to go through things like this. But I'm the one who almost died, and just lost somebody I loved, and of the two of us I'll be the first to say there are maybe worse things."

"Like what?"

"Like the shit you put yourself through," he says, glancing down at the scarf in his hands. Then as he's looking downward, something catches his eye in the open drawer, on the side where there aren't any folded clothes but some books and other items. And on top...

Brian follows his gaze to what he's looking at: a little velvet box. Inside of it they both know there are two rings. Justin looks at it a long time, but doesn't touch it.

As if trying to find a way to explain, Brian says, "I actually didn't hate it, you know. Pretending to be the romantic monogamous pair you always wanted to be. I don't know if I could have done it for forever, but it was surprisingly painless to try it for a while. I figured...why not keep a souvenir?"

"Of our holiday from reality?" Justin crosses his arms, looking uncomfortable. "I guess that's what our time together has always been. Living in the present from day to day. But the moment one of us started thinking about the future was when it was over. Marriage vows? Our country manor with stables? A palace for your prince? That was just a fairy tale. It couldn't have been our lives."

"Our lives don't_ have_ to be a fairy tale," Brian says.

Justin looks downward, away from his face. "...Yeah."

He walks away from him down the steps and Brian follows him as he sits down on the couch in front of where his shoes are sitting on the floor. As he starts to put them on, Brian sits next to him.

"I will take that check, if it'll make you feel better," Justin explains. "But I'm only going to use it if I end up really needing it."

"Okay."

"And I _will_ pay you back if I do."

"I know you will."

He finishes putting on his shoes and sits up, looking at him. "I wish all this hadn't happened this way...I shouldn't have tried to make a decision about this right now. But I didn't want to leave Pittsburgh again not even knowing what I can expect from you this time. I just need stability right now."

Brian nods. "I know."

They just look at each other sadly for a long moment, and then Justin stands up like he supposes he has no choice but to just leave like this, but Brian's arms catch him around his hips as he tries to walk by. He just holds him in place there with his face against his waist like he cannot bear to look him in the eye. There are so many words screaming inside of him at this moment that he cannot say to Justin out loud because it would not be right to burden him with them, so all he can do is plead with him wordlessly with his arms around him.

Justin puts his arms around his shoulders and holds him against him, now breathing a little unsteadily. "I'm sorry...I love you, but I just don't know if I can trust you."

Brian pulls away a little to look up at him. "Don't worry. No apologies."

Justin takes in a shaky breath, leans down and kisses him, and then has to unwrap himself from Brian's arms like they are stuck solidly in place. As he walks away, Brian just keeps staring forward at nothing, because he cannot watch him go out the door. 

* * *

Two days later, looking for the remote for the television, Brian finds a tiny little mitten buried in between two cushions on his couch. When he calls Lindsay, she is so shocked to hear from him again so soon that she assumes something bad has happened and answers the phone saying, "Oh my God, what's wrong?"

"One of Gus's hands is cold," he answers.

"Huh?"

"I just found his mitten in my couch."

"Oh, good, we were looking for that! I forgot we were over there once; that's the only place we didn't check."

"Daddy Rage saves the day again."

"So what's actually wrong?"

Brian pauses, thrown off by the question. "What are you talking about?"

"Come on. You wouldn't call me about this instead of just sending us the mitten without a word unless you were taking advantage of a good excuse to call me."

This makes Brian go quiet a moment, thinking about that and realizing it might actually be somewhat true. "Nothing is wrong. Besides just about...everything," he admits.

He doesn't tell her the whole detailed story, because he really doesn't want to relive it, but that is the beauty of his and Lindsay's friendship; she is able to read so much from his tone of voice as he only vaguely explains what happened that she basically keeps guessing until she gets the whole story right.

"Well, I can't say I'm all that surprised," she says. "After all, you're not the only person in the world who turns to sex when they're in pain."

"I think with me, it's more a case of not abstaining from sex just because I'm in pain."

"However you want to think of it. Plus with the two of you, who were together for so long before, it must be as easy and natural as shaking hands."

Brian thinks then about how a long time ago around the time he and Justin made up the rules of their arrangement, he started to realize how having sex with him was never much of a surprise anymore because they had done it so many times, but he didn't really mind this as much as he would have expected. He usually thinks it keeps things interesting when he can't always expect what someone is going to be like in bed. Sometimes it's like a guessing game, spotting somebody in a crowd when on the hunt and trying to tell, _Top or bottom? Wild and loud or more subdued? Dark, cigarette-smoker scent or sweet and soapy-smelling?_ After a while, there was no longer any of that excitement of surprise with Justin, but he found that to actually be dependable, sometimes preferable; making love to somebody so many times that you know every contour of their body as well as your own and can recognize their smell on the sheets even when they are gone, becoming used to the distinct way they make love, so much that if they suddenly start making love a different way or you smell and taste something unfamiliar on them, you know that they have been with somebody else. At age thirty-one, having this kind of closeness with someone was completely new to him. Justin was with Ethan for a while, but Brian has only ever known this with one person in his life.

Lindsay is right that it is no wonder it happened again so easily. In a strange way, it makes sense that nothing else in the world felt safer and more certain right then than that, knowing each other in that way again. There was no better way to momentarily escape the present.

"But what now?" Brian asks, and hears Lindsay sigh on the other line like she has no idea what the answer is. Usually Lindsay gives him advice that he just rejects, but if she isn't even sure what to say this time, he knows he's in deep shit.

"Now...you let him know you're still there, even if not as his partner," she says. "The last thing he needs is to feel regret for forcing you completely out of his life."

"But Linz...maybe that's what he wants."

"What?"

"Or at least what he needs. I mean...doesn't what just happened maybe prove that we're just really bad at not being together when we stay close at all?"

She is silent for a moment. "...Yeah. Maybe."

And that is it, he is afraid. Maybe that is it. He and Justin have dealt with a lot of problems together, but it seems like things have never been this fucked up before.

"I don't know what to tell you," Lindsay says. "Except you just have to give it time and see how he feels later."

Brian wishes he could be optimistic, but he is not. After a long, disturbing stretch of silence, he says, "So I'll try to remember to ship this mitten tomorrow."

"Don't bother; he has another pair to use. We'll just get it next time we're there."

"Okay."

"Give everyone my love."

"Sure...Bye."

For the next few days, Brian's loft is hauntingly quiet. He cannot stop thinking about all the things Justin said and how they were all horribly true. He remembers at one moment the day they were fighting in his office after he told him he was going to Ibiza, and he shouted, "We're not fucking married!" and left the room. And right afterwards, the terrible reality of it all was for a very brief moment lucidly clear to him: they _were_ as bad as a fucking married couple carrying on like this. He was Jack shouting at Joan before storming out of the house to go to the bars, making sure she knew he was not going to be told what to do, not caring if his child heard the whole thing in the other room.

But the realization did not last in his mind long enough to stick, so that when he came back into the room and Justin, impossibly, tolerated it all and said, "I just want you to know that I love you," Brian only looked at him and did not say what he should have.

He did not say anything at all. 


	9. Part VIII

One afternoon in his apartment, Justin is sitting on the floor looking through a thick stack of old drawings deciding what to throw out and what to keep. He is thinking of maybe framing one to send to Melanie soon when her birthday is coming up, if he can find something that he can see looking nice hanging in the kind of house he imagines her and Lindsay having in Canada. Every once in a while he comes across something he so strongly dislikes that he instantly crumbles it into a ball and tosses it in the trash, but others he stares at for a while trying to make up his mind about whether it's decent or complete shit. He's looking at a drawing of a horse when he hears a knock on his door, accompanied with a voice calling from out in the hall.

"Mr. Taylor? You home?"

Justin gets up and goes to the door, opening it up to see a thin man in his 60s. "Hey, Mr. Riven."

"Oh, pardon me," he says. "I wasn't sure if you'd be here. I know you've been gone."

"Yeah, but I've been back for almost a week," he says with a smile.

"Oh. No kidding."

"What's up?"

"Well, I just wanted to let you know, the first morning you were gone that alarm clock in there was going off for the whole morning."

"Oh, shit...I'm sorry, I didn't even think to turn it off."

"It's no problem. It was the lady who lives under you banging on the ceiling to try to get you to make it stop that was bothering me more than anything."

Justin laughs.

"But see," he goes on, "after I kept knocking and you didn't answer, I got the landlord to come up here and open your door but it wasn't even locked. You've got to be careful, you know."

"Oh, yeah, I don't really worry about keeping it locked all the time," Justin explains. "There's nothing in here anybody would want to steal. Unless they have a taste for abstract paintings."

"Ah...I see." He glances over his shoulder into the room for a second and says, "Say, that's pretty good."

Justin turns around and sees he's looking at a painting he has propped up against one of the walls. "Oh, thanks. I tend to hope so. Well...thanks for the warning."

"Sure. Take it easy," Mr. Riven says, walking away from his doorway. Justin closes the door and goes back inside, shaking his head a little.

He has sat back down and is just about to make up his mind about the horse drawing when he hears another knock on the door. Knowing how Mr. Riven is, Justin bets he just forgot the real reason he came to talk to him and actually wants to borrow a stamp or something. But when he gets back up and opens the door again, he is so surprised to see who is there that he stands frozen and speechless for a moment.

"...Brian."

They just look at each other for a while at first, before Brian finally says, "Hey, Sunshine."

"What are you...?" Justin is so surprised to suddenly have Brian standing in his hallway that he can hardly put together a complete question.

"Well, are you going to let me in or leave me out here listening to your neighbor's music?" he asks, pointing toward Mr. Riven's door.

Justin unsurely steps back away from the door so he can come inside and closes it. He sees that he's messing with his car keys in his hands and asks, "Did you _drive_ here?"

"Yeah," he answers.

"But...why?"

"I came to see your show," he says. "This Wednesday from 6:00 to 7:30 at the Promenade Art Gallery. Which is...somewhere on Philadelphia Drive. Is that right?" At Justin's confused expression he says, "I looked up their website."

Justin gives a short laugh. "Why didn't you just call and tell me you wanted to come?"

"I was afraid you'd tell me not to bother."

"Well, I have to say, it _does_ seem a little like you're just trying to prove something, especially with you choosing to drive all the way here."

Brian shrugs. "I got tired of airports. I almost did have to call you about half an hour ago, though. This place is fucking hard to find."

"Yeah, it can be."

He looks at him a long moment. "So...you doing okay?"

"Yeah, I suppose," Justin says. "Better, at least. You were right. I needed to get back here and start _doing_ something again. And as much as I don't like being alone in this apartment most of the time, it's kind of given me a chance to think about some things."

Brian nods, and then says, "Oh, I was...listening to that CD you made me on the way over here."

He smiles a little. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. And you know...You have good taste in music."

Justin laughs. "Brian, it's not like you've never heard what kind of music I listen to before."

"I know, but...I was just thinking. Because I was telling Mikey a while ago that you and I don't really have anything in common. But I guess we like a lot of the same music. I mean...what did you put on there? Beck. The Dandy Warhols. Even...what the fuck? _Joy Division_? You're too young to know who Joy Division were."

He grins, and for a second it looks like that old light has finally come back into his smile. "You may think so."

A whistling sound comes from the kitchen, and Justin looks behind him and says, "Oh, hang on. I've got tea. Do you want some?"

"No, that's okay," Brian says, and Justin leaves the room.

Brian looks around the apartment, glancing down at all the drawings piled up on one part of the floor, and then noticing a large painting sitting against the wall. It is of a little girl in a light green dress standing on a beach in front of the seashore. She has red hair in two pigtails blowing in the breeze and large, expressive eyes that very thin, almost unnoticeable tears are running out of down each cheek, glimmering brightly just like the waves behind her sparkling in the sunlight. Sitting against the frame is a piece of notebook paper with a poem written down on it, which Brian picks up and reads.

**"maggie and milly and molly and may"  
e.e. cummings **

_maggie and milly and molly and may  
went down to the beach (to play one day) _

and maggie discovered a shell that sang  
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and

milly befriended a stranded star  
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing  
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles; and

may came home with a smooth round stone  
as small as a world and as large as alone.

for whatever we lose (like a you or a me)  
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

Looking back down at the child in the painting makes Brian feel a sudden, uncomfortable stab of sadness, like all the feelings he has had but not fully realized his entire life are all flooding back into him at the same time. When Justin comes back out of the kitchen with a cup of tea, he stays with his eyes on the canvas for a moment like he has been stupefied by it, before placing the sheet of paper back down on the floor in front of it.

Putting his cup down on a desk, Justin says, "That's kind of a last-minute addition to the show. Did you see the poem that goes with it?"

Brian nods as he comes and stands next to him to look at it.

"I read that poem sometime when I was in high school," Justin explains. "And I always remembered it reminded me of a day when my family was on vacation in Florida and we went to the beach. I guess Molly was four or five. She was going all around the beach collecting shells, and she found one that actually still had something alive in it. She wasn't expecting to open it up and find something slimy inside so she screamed and dropped it and ran to my mom crying. We just laughed about it a lot...I've always thought it's kind of interesting how adults are just amused by little kids crying about little things like that. Because they're just kids. They have no idea how bad life can get. But still...I can't think of anything much worse than dying before you even get the chance to find that out."

Brian looks away from the painting, meeting eyes with him. Once again, they just look at each other for a long time. Then Justin goes back over to the desk to take a drink of his tea. "It's pretty cool that they're letting me put that in, especially since it doesn't really go with anything else I have. And they're going to have the poem next to it with the title and everything."

"And what's the painting's title?" Brian asks.

He shrugs. "No need to come up with anything clever. _Molly_. So where are you staying?"

"Hilton," he says. "Nine blocks away from here."

Justin nods. He puts down his mug, sitting down in the chair at the desk, and looks down a little. "God, I can't believe you're here...You know, if you'd called first, I wouldn't have told you not to come."

"Well...good. Now I don't have to feel like an asshole." Brian goes over to the mattress and takes a seat on the edge of it.

Justin turns the chair so that he is facing him and crosses his legs up on it. "One of the first nights I was back here," he says, "I had this really fucked up nightmare. Of course, I wasn't used to being here because I'd been sleeping in my room at home, so when I first woke up I kind of didn't know where I was at first, and it just felt really terrible...A few years ago, back when I started having nightmares practically every night, I just got used to you always being next to me when I woke up."

"Yeah, I remember," Brian says in a sort of dark voice. "...I hated that. Sometimes you didn't even want me to touch you."

"But even when you didn't hold me, at least you were there," he says. "And as long as you were I was able to calm down and think, _It's over, I'm never going to have to go through that again, I'm here now and I'm safe_. This time...it just didn't feel right that you weren't there."

Brian sits silently for a moment, biting his lip, and says, "You could have called me if you wanted to. I wouldn't have cared."

"Yeah," he says with doubtful sarcasm. "After what happened. What I said."

"You were absolutely right about everything you said."

"But none of it should have been important then. It shouldn't have mattered to me what the reason was that we were able to be that close again after how much we'd kind of grown apart. I should have just been grateful that you were there for me through everything when I needed you and thanked you for that."

Brian shakes his head insistently. "You were being perfectly reasonable to assume that my sudden change in behavior toward you was only because of Molly's death. I guess in a way, it was. And with how many times I've pushed you away before, it's no wonder you would doubt it was going to last this time..." He crosses his arms on his knees, sighing heavily like he is exasperated with himself. "Now that I look back on it, even when we were living under the same roof as a couple I still always kept you at a distance in some ways. And in the past few days as I've been almost sure that I've really lost you for good this time and there's nothing I can do to fix it, I've been thinking about that and it all seems so fucking ridiculous. I honestly don't know how you put up with all that for five years, much less can I imagine how you could risk getting yourself back into it again instead of running as far away from it as you can."

The room is expectantly silent for a while, until it is not clear if either of them has anything more to say about that. Justin stares down at the floor for a long time, thinking hard. Then he just says, "Well...neither can I. But I guess that's just something about people that doesn't make a whole lot of sense."

Brian looks up and meets eyes with him, seeming to not dare assume that means what it could, his face staying the same.

Justin taps his fingers on his knees a second, thinking more, and asks him, "What would you think of canceling your reservation at the Hilton and...just staying here?"

Brian stares at him with a fixed, meaningful look. "Really?" he says quietly.

Justin nods. He gestures toward where he's sitting and says, "The mattress isn't_ that_ bad, as you can see. It'll be like your college days."

Brian smiles. "The only lumpy mattresses you could feel a pea through I slept on in my college days were on other people's beds."

"I'd figure as much," he says with a light laugh.

Brian's smile gradually falls and his face turns serious. "I guess this is kind of a strange twist of fate."

"What?"

"Well, I was always the one who thought it was crazy to enter into a committed relationship, it being doomed to fail, based on bullshit and lies, bound to just cause misery and all that...But this time around, I'm the one asking you to do something crazy. You're the one who has all these reasons to run away."

"I guess it's a good thing I don't have the same opinion about love that you do," Justin says.

Brian takes a few seconds to see how that doesn't register quite right in his head and says correctively, "_Did_...I mean, bullshit maybe, and misery, but lies? I can't exactly keep living with the comfort of believing that after everything that's happened. I wish these horrible things didn't have to happen for me to be able to open up to people. I wish _all _human beings could know what they have without it being taken away. But maybe having love kick the shit out of us is the only way we know it's even real. Maybe if I had never almost lost you, I could have gone on pretending you meant nothing to me and actually believing it myself for forever, or at least too long for you to keep sticking around instead of getting sick of being taken for granted and moving on. But you can't say love is not real when it's making you feel like...Well, you know what it can make you feel like."

"Like your soul is being torn to shreds?" Justin offers.

"Yeah, like that...Maybe love isn't what a bunch of straight morons crack it up to be. It's not some fairy tale in which once you actually find it you live happily ever after and that's that. _Sometimes_, when you're lucky, it's hearts and flowers and laughter and all that cute stuff they associate it with. But sometimes it's seeing somebody who means a lot to you have to go through something so bad you can hardly bear to watch it. Sometimes it's screaming at each other. Sometimes it's crying all over each other. Sometimes it's...well, it's hell. But it's real. And for some crazy, fucked-up, stupid reason, all of us need it. And that's why I did something insane like went to see you in the hospital, even though I didn't really want to see you then and just wanted to forget everything that happened. And that's why even though after I thought I knew we couldn't be together anymore I came to meet you at the airport. And...I guess that's why I'm here now, even though after driving all this way you could have just told me to fuck off and I would have completely understood."

Justin only looks at him a long time, the room seeming to ring with an internal, mental echo of all those words he just said in the silence that follows. He uncrosses his legs, stands up from the chair and goes over to Brian, sitting down onto his lap with his legs on each side of him. He puts his arms around his shoulders and leans down to kiss his neck. Then as he rests his head on his shoulder they each close their eyes, holding each other tightly. They sit this way a long time saying nothing, just feeling themselves meld together again at last, each becoming more whole again with every deep breath.

"Brian?" Justin then says softly.

"What?"

"Do you ever think about how things would be if we never met?"

"...Sometimes," Brian admits.

"Things could have been a lot easier for us, you know."

Brian pulls away a little to look Justin in the face, one of his hands going up into his hair. "Fuck easier," he says.

Justin's smile comes onto his face gradually, like a revelation, before he leans in again and they kiss, slowly and leisurely like they have all the time in world. For that is the only way to enjoy anything when time may be all you don't have for all you know. And Brian thinks to himself that he will be glad to wake up with Justin beside him the next morning, even if it is in a cramped apartment room instead of at home and it is not something he will be able to have every day.

A long time ago on his 30th birthday, Michael showed up at just the right time to save him from nearly casting his life away like it was nothing, and he tried to get him to see all the things he took for granted when he told him, "You will always be young and you will always be beautiful," and it almost sunk in and got through to him. It must have a little, because he went to Justin's prom. But it did not completely permeate into his head until after the scarf that was around his neck when Michael had to come stop him was then around Justin's neck as he nearly got killed and Brian was then the one who had to save somebody else. And in his mind now, he is still always wearing that blood-stained scarf against his skin under his clothes, because life is such a precious thing that is not to be thrown away, and that is so easy to forget without being painfully and cruelly reminded, but he cannot let himself forget. He has to remember.

**THE END**


End file.
